• Gurtejbir Sandhu and Sumanta Deb winners from SP Jain School of Global Management - Dubai
• 134 students (67 teams) participated in the first edition of Tata Crucible Campus Quiz Dubai
• Top team won cash prize of AED 15,000*

Dubai,  2nd May, 2017: Gurtejbir Sandhu and Sumanta Deb of SP Jain School of Global Management - Dubai were declared champions at the inaugural edition of Tata Crucible Campus Quiz in Dubai, held on Sunday, 30th April 2017, at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS) Pilani, Dubai Campus. Navaneet Nair and Yashkumar Asnani from Manipal University became the runners-up of the quiz. The Dubai chapter of this coveted campus quiz witnessed a participation of 67 teams from universities in United Arab Emirates (UAE). BITS Pilani, Dubai Campus were the host partners and Mr. Vipul, Consul General of India, in Dubai was the Guest of Honour for the quiz.

The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz Dubai 2017 witnessed multiple rounds of high energy quizzing, comprising a wide range of audio-visual questions from the world of business and economy, where eight top teams were chosen through a preliminary round, followed by a wild card round, who then battled in the on-stage finals round. The winners from SP Jain School of Global Management were awarded a cash prize of AED 15,000. The runners-up took home a cash prize of AED 5,000.  Besides the cash prizes, there were also fabulous goodies like e-readers and Tata Crucible merchandise for the finalists and attractive prizes for the audience too.

The preliminary round of the quiz consisted of 20 questions across assorted topics addressed to all participants. This was followed by a short wild card round amongst teams ranked 7 to 14 based on the scores, out of which 2 teams joined the other top scoring teams to make it to the stage final.

The other finalist teams, all of whom were tested with five rounds of live, rapid-fire quizzing, included:

Karan Mehta and Amrit Giri from University of Wollongong in Dubai
Kathy Tavares and Edwin Cardoza from Middlesex University – Dubai Campus
Jitesh Gurav and Shresh Mathur from Birla Institute of Technology and Science
Tejas Kulkarni and Krishna Kaushik from Birla Institute of Technology and Science
Shaleen Bengani and Kunal Sethi from Birla Institute of Technology and Science
 Overjoyed with their victory, Gurtejbir Sandhu from SP Jain School of Global Management - Dubai said, “I feel very excited and ecstatic knowing that we are the champions of the UAE region. It's been a great one-hour of quizzing with the Quizmaster and everyone else. All the teams were really competitive. Some of the questions were tough for us to track and we were happy to know that the audience also had answers. It gave us a lot of insight about the Middle East region that we are supposed to study. The most important part was teamwork, at least in the last round where we knew that if we go wrong, we'll have lesser chance of winning so we waited for our golden opportunity of the last question which made us winners and not Runners up. As business school students, our main strategy was to wait for the opportunity or let it be so that we don't lose out on points. Overall, It was a great event. We were not even sure of making it to the stage, seeing the difficulty of the wildcard round.” Sumanta Deb, his teammate, added, “I feel absolutely ecstatic. I feel so happy that we could manage to come first. It was totally unexpected. In the first round where we were given 20 questions, like Gurtejbir mentioned that our teamwork was vital. There were number of questions where we had to discuss over and over again. We cancelled three answers and wrote one answer and then we were hoping it to be right. We finally got to know that was right. That was fun! We judged the level of difficulty in the wildcard round and we were hoping that if we get a chance again, we will be coming up against some tough competition, which we did. I think it's luck or being at the right place at the right time. We managed to get the right answers.”

 The Guest of Honour for the evening, Mr. Vipul, Consul General of India in Dubai, gave away the prizes to the winning teams. He said, “I congratulate BITS Pilani and Tata's for organising this first Tata Crucible Campus Quiz in Dubai. The quiz has seen very good participation from several colleges. The quiz showed the depth of quizzing talent in Indian students as well as International students who are studying in the universities in Dubai including Indian universities and I congratulate the winners. The S. P. Jain College won the quiz and I congratulate them on their winning.”

The Tata Crucible Campus Quiz in Dubai was hosted by ace quizmaster Mr. Giri Balasubramaniam, popularly known as Pickbrain, who in his signature style kept the participants and the audience engrossed in the competition. The evening was also graced by senior Tata leaders from Dubai and representatives from the local universities amongst others.      

(1) AED - United Arab Emirates Dirham