The West Zonals for the 2016 edition of Tata Crucible was an exciting event that featured very capable teams from across cities in western India. The champions from the respective cities who qualified were:
- BITS Pilani Goa: Meghana and Ashwin
- SEMCOM, Anand : Bhushan Patel and Stanny Davis
- LDCE Ahmedabad: Rohan Shah and Shrey
- VNIT Nagpur: Mukund Srinivasan and Aditya Prava
- SIIB Pune: Dhruv Puri and Abhishek Pandey
- IIM Indore: Avijeet and Tamarish
- NLU Jodhpur: Sanjay and Rajendra
- SP JAIN Mumbai: Siddharth and Ronak
- RAIT Nerul: Devendra K and Anit Basu
The final was a keenly fought pot boiler that saw several teams gain and lose runs as they tried to out beat each other on the buzzer. They intensity of the battle was such that room for error was soon negligible. The quiz progressed quickly with the NLU and BITS Pilani teams leading early on.
The battle in the second phase was very tight, SEMCOM, VNIT, SP Jain and IIM Indore all in with a chance. It was the team from BITS Pilani that lost out on a good chance, while at the end it was patience and some quality answers that helped NLU and SEMCOM march into the national finale after a four way tie breaker.
The guest of honour, Mr. R. Ganesh, appreciated the teams and humorously remarked on how the event showed him how much he did not know in comparison to the young teams. He spoke of how a great future awaits these capable youngsters.