Report on Techbiz quiz at Symbiosis Law School, Pune

Date: Sunday, 25^th February 2018

Quiz: Techbiz Quiz

Venue: Symbiosis Law School

Fest/Organized by: Symbhav

QM: Nikhil Joseph Zacharias

Flavour: BizTech

Results:

1. Rohan Khanna and Viraj Bake (Open)

2. Sachin Sultanture and Ashish (Open)

Other Finalists:

Anirudh Anilkumar and Arnabh Sengupta (AFMC)

Ankit Choudhury and Akshay (PICT+COEP)

Anit and Samrat (Open)

Nikhil Motlag and Abhishek Kumar Singh (Open)

Kapinjal Choudhary and Sai Karthik (Open)

Omkar Dhakephalkar and Pranav Pawar (Open)

My team-mate, Pranav Pawar and I thought that the time had come to take the plunge, and hence took the momentous decision to participate in a biz quiz. For a while now we had thought that biz quizzes are dry, unexciting and the haunts of pseudo-quizzers whose aim is to rush in for a quick prize-money raid. And though the opinion is yet to fully break (as all prejudices are, I suppose), we were in for a pleasant surprise.

But first the slight horror of a bloated reg-fee. For a while the open reg fees for the techbiz quizzes at Symbhav were significantly high as compared to other fests (INR 500+); and justifiably so. The prize money had always been in the order of INR 10000+. In any case, as non-career biz quizzers (District 12 denizens) we balked when after a long journey to the venue, we were told that the reg fees had almost doubled to 600 from 300. But after a few deft calls by the supremely considerate Nikhil (NJZ henceforth), the matter was sorted and things returned to normal.

Despite being a morning quiz, there was quite an attendance. Being an open quiz, there was a considerable open junta, some who had even driven down from Mumbai. AFMC also sent in its highly active quizzing corp. This was accompanied with the usual smattering of college quizzers from other colleges and home teams. The elims started with less than standard delay, after a photo-op for sponsorship reasons.

The elims were fun and easy. Despite being a biz quiz, it was guessable for us and to our surprise, managed to qualify to the finals alongside professionals. Since it was a biz-quiz, of course names and proper-nouns to be asked was legit; but they too could be answered with a bit of basic knowledge. A total of 28 questions. There was a wide disparity between the first few teams who qualified and the last few in terms of scores.

The finals were a simple affair of two IRs, 32 Questions, and eight teams. We struggled a bit but the outstation biz quizzers were on the top of the game, including the better equipped team from AFMC. Pouncing on almost every question the winning team took and maintained the lead throughout. Because there was no limit on the questions a team can get directly, it was a funny at a time when our team got almost six questions in a row (of course, we could rarely answer them correctly). It was fun though. Despite a bit of an issue with the point-keeping which got some teams up in arms, things were sorted out quickly thanks to the cooperation of the organizers.

One issue I had was the lack of standardization in the slides. There was constant font change, erratic grammar and many a time it was not very clear what was asked. Again, this is very personal problem and ancillary to the quiz, not affecting its integrity. My team-mate felt that a few questions were very verbose and text-heavy when several parts of it could be slashed down (I agree). Also, he was of the opinion that tech was given less than its (ideally 50%) due.

Of course, a very special thanks is due to NJZ and the SLS Quiz Club for adjusting alongside Silhouettes in AFMC and the COEP quiz club over the weekend. Multiple open and college quizzes over three days. NJZ managed to finish his quiz in time so that we could attend the one in COEP later in the afternoon without much trouble. Thank You!

Overall, a very enjoyable first biz quiz for me.

Report by: Omkar Dhakephalkar