Tata Crucible Campus Quiz held in Singapore

Three teams from the Singapore Management University (SMU) emerged big winners at this year's Tata Crucible Campus quiz, Singapore. Together they swept the top three prizes of this exciting business quiz, which was held on October 29, 2010. The event was graced by guest of honour rear admiral (national service) Ronnie Tay, CEO of Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, who gave away the prizes to the winning teams.

The SMU team of Abhishek Kumar and Nabil Rasheed took the first prize and walked away with a cash prize of $7,000, other goodies and the offer of an international internship. Runners-up Chang Weilong Ivan and Abbas Ali Mohamed Irshad took away a cash prize of S$ 3,000, while the second runners-up Sayanee Basu and Varun Arora got a cash prize of S$ 2,000. The top two teams will be invited to compete against the top two teams from India and the UK in the international finals, to be held in India early next year.

The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz was anchored by veteran quizmaster Giri Balasubramaniam, aka Pickbrain. A new format at the preliminary round saw 26 questions from A to Z, followed by a wild card round among team numbers 7-14 to select 2 teams who joined the 6 top scoring teams to make it an 8-team final.

The final teams on stage included 5 teams from SMU, 2 from National University of Singapore (NUS) and 1 team from Nanyang Technical University (NTU). The teams were tested with five rounds of live quizzing, including Mapping Excellence, Uniquely Singapore, etc. A last round tie-break pitched the two SMU teams against each other.

"The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz is an exciting event that encourages youth in Singapore to look beyond academics and apply their knowledge to the business world, including the use of infocomm. Such efforts by the Tata group can contribute to preparing students for their careers in the future," said Mr Tay.

Vivek Kamra, president and CEO, NatSteel Holdings, said, "As the Tata group expands its presence in Southeast Asia, it continues to be committed to the local communities it operates in. This challenging quiz enables us to reach out to the youth and stimulate their minds. We are very pleased with the overwhelming response and sheer enthusiasm of the local student community."

Brought into Singapore in 2007, the Tata Crucible Campus Quiz has once again proven to be popular with the students of tertiary institutions, including NTU, NUS, SMU, etc. This year, nearly 140 teams from higher education institutions took part in the intense battle of wits, where they were tested on business subjects ranging from business houses and history, to people and products.