International Yoga Day Takes Over Udaan Business Quiz

Here’s my (The Quizmaster) point of view of the 5th edition of Udaan – A Business Quiz for Corporates. Udaan was held on 21st June in the beautiful auditorium of SAIL MTI. From a modest beginning of 26 teams in 2011, mostly from SAIL’s plants nearby, to 66 teams in 2015 from different corporates with most of them being outstation teams, Udaan has come a long way. Like mangoes and IPL, it has become a main stay of Indian summers. And I am glad to be associated with such a wonderful event. Mr. Srimant Malik from SAIL MTI, who works hard every year to put the show together, told me the evening before the show that a lot of teams were cribbing that they haven’t ‘cracked my style’, they don’t know what kind of questions I will be asking and the format I will follow. Not interested in being secretive about my craft, I gave them a bit of taste about what is the kind of content the participants can expect.

Anyway, the day was also the International Day of Yoga so I followed the theme and teams started their rainy Sunday morning in Ranchi with the prelimaasana. I selected 6 teams- Vizag Steel, Bokaro Steel Plant, 2 x Rourkela Steel Plant, Bhilai Steel Plant and Indian Oil. Both RSP teams have been past winners of this quiz. The teams from Vizag, Bokaro and Bhilai making their debut on stage. And Indian Oil, well let’s just say they had a very forgettable outing in 2013. Bokaro inched past Capgemini in a sudden death tie-breaker. For the audience, I had organised a crossword with the clues appearing as and when the show went on. According to unconfirmed reports and unreliable sources, it was the first time a quizmaster actually cared about his audience 🙂 Ok, so the inevitable happened and finals began with hangmanaasana, moved on to choosaasana and finally to buzzeraasana (Inevitable?! My fascination with the theme 😀 ). Some highlights from the quiz- 1. Since inception, Rourkela Steel Plant has been winning the quiz. Albeit, 2 different teams. 2. RSP A was not leading the quiz till the penultimate question, instead it was Indian Oil who was at 54 and RSP A at 53. RSP A buzzed in on the last question and gave the correct answer to get 6 points and win the quiz for the second year in a row. (Chetan Sharma to Javed Miandad Part 2) 3. No animals were harmed in the making of this quiz. Final scores- RSP A – 59 Indian Oil – 53 RSP B – 40 Some questions from the quiz- 1. Which American sports clothing company, founded by Kevin Plank, overtook Adidas in the U.S. sportswear market to be number 2 in 2014? 2. In a first for the magazine industry, who is ‘guest editing’ the July-August issue of MORE magazine? This is also the third time she will make an appearance on the magazine’s cover. 3. Maintained by Palakkad’s District Tourism Promotion Council, this is the Malampuzha Garden. Who conceived and designed the garden? 4. The PEN Literary Awards are the most comprehensive in the United States. Each year, PEN confers more than $150,000 to writers in various fields. PEN Freedom of Expression Courage Award 2015 has been ‘controversially’ awarded to? 5. UB Center is an unusual Alabama attraction that sees over a million visitors every year. It goes by the tagline ‘You never know what you’ll find’. Started in 1970, what is it the only one of it’s kind in USA?