Quizzing in India
Quizzing in India is quite popular, and has developed its own, unique flavour. Quizzing in India is different from American and British Quizzing in that it is diverse, with different genres catering to different geographical regions, age groups, interests, etc.
Origin of Quizzing in India
Quizzing in India began when Neil O'Brien conducted the first well organized, formal quiz in 1967 at Christ the King Church Parish Hall in Calcutta (now Kolkata). O'Brien who had recently returned from England and had been exposed to the pub quizzing culture there started quizzing, which first became popular among the Anglo Indian community before it became popular among a wider audience. The concept of live rounds in quizzing was introduced by another quizmaster Alban Scolt, who passed away in 2006.
Quizzing by Region
Indian Quizzers are GeneRally concentrated in the major cities of India. Each city has, over time, evolved its own peculiar brand of quizzing.
Bangalore
Bangalore has a rich tradition of quizzing. The late Wing Commander G R Mulky founded the Karnataka Quiz Association in 1983. The KQA holds quizzes in the School, College and Open categories every month. Another large quizzing group is the Bangalore Quiz group, with a membership of nearly 1500 quizzers. The Bangalore Quiz Group conducts online as well as offline quizzes for schools, colleges, corporate institutions etc.
Bangalore has witnessed two quizzing booms; one, in the 1980s, was made possible by Bangalore's emergence as a major destination for education. The second boom happened mid-1990s because many young professionals took up residence in the city. Under the Peepal Tree is a festival of quizzing that first started in 1999.
Kolkata
Kolkata is the birthplace of quizzing in India. Neil O'Brien, an Anglo-Indian, was one of the first people to promote quizzing in India in its present form. In the beginning open quizzing was strongly supported by the Anglo-Indian community and the Dalhousie Institute club still hosts most of the annual open quizzes that are held in the city.
In open quizzing, the Eddie Hyde Memorial Open Quiz is the oldest annual open quiz in the country but has been irregularly held in recent years. Other well known open quizzes that are still regularly held are the Dalhousie Institute (DI) Open conducted by Neil O'Brien and the Argus Open conducted by R.M. Sen. Some of the well-known open quizzes that have now died out are Argus Losers Plate, Summer Invitation Quiz (conducted by Francis Groser) and the North Star quiz. The Saturday Club Quiz is another long running quiz whose 2007 EDition was held on 7th July 2007.
For a few years, the Argus Apex Quiz, an individual quiz was also held but soon lost popularity. Anweshock, another quiz club, is regularly organising various quiz programmes. Neil O'Brien's sons Derek and Barry are regular quizmasters on TV shows, while Alban Scolt's son Andrew conducts school quizzes.
The College quizzing circuit in Kolkata is reasonably active. School level quizzing remains quite strong and continues to supply strong quizzards to the open quizzing circuit.one of the most famous school-college-university level quiz is Qriosity. Qriosity is organized by "Enquiry", Quiz club of Jadavpur university. Qriosity 2007 was held at 29th September, 2007.
Enquiry is a popular quiz club of Jadavpur University. It usually conducts its quiz sessions on every Thursday at Jadavpur University. Aarohan, another tech - fest organised by NIT Durgapur holds eastern India's largest quizzing festival, Exquizzit.NIT Durgapur has also been organising quiz grand prix for for a long time now.
Allahabad
National Institute of Technology, Allahabad has been organizing Gnosiomania, a national level quiz festival with dedicated quizzes and other mind games. The fest is going into its 5th year in 2008. NIT, Allahabad has a passionate quizzing culture and apart from this dedicated festival, also keeps organizing quizzes round the year.
Kerala
Kerala is a state which has produced many eminent quizzers. Kerala has a decent quizzing circuit, with several quizzes held in Trivandrum, Cochin, Calicut, Kottayam and Trichur. College of Engineering Trivandrum, Government Engineering College Thrissur, NIT Calicut,Government Medical College Calicut and Government Medical College Trivandrum have been quite prominent in the Kerala quizzing circuit. We also see working professionals from organizations like F.A.C.T, State Bank of India, Reserve Bank, Infosys, TCS etc also coming into the picture of late.
The main event of the Kerala college quizzing calender is Crossroads, the annual quiz festival of NIT Calicut, which comprises four quizzes. Other prestigious events include the SBT Intel Teens, DC Kizhekkamuri Quiz (which offers the highest cash prize in the state) and the Babu Chazhikkadan Trophy. Prominent quizmasters include Dr. Nagesh S, Anil Raghavan, Kishore Chandran and Abraham Joseph.
Kerala has an active schools quiz circuit, with several quizzes held in Trivandrum, Cochin, Trichur and Calicut. The TCS IT quiz, being conducted here since 2000 in Trivandrum ( Kochi since 2006) deserves special mention. This year at the National Finals in Mumbai, the Kochi team became the National champions. Among others the Hindu Young World School quiz is also a main event in the school quizzing circuit. School quizzing is very common across Kerala.
Several quizzers from Kerala are regulars in the national quiz circuit. Grey Cells, Enquire, Illuminati and Dreamz are some of the several quiz clubs which are active in Kerala. Grey Cells has been conducting Open quizzes in Kerala since April 2007 with some success and the active support of various commercial enterprises.
Nagpur
This Central Indian city has seen a steady rise in quizzing over the past few years. The main hub of the quizzing activities being Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology's Quiz Club - Quiz Pro Co.1 It has been organizing QUIZFEST since 2006 along with numerous other quizzing events around the year. QuizFest 2007 was held on 24th & 25th March, 2007. Quizfest '08 will be for now held on 23rd and 24th February, 2008. It is an open event and all are invited. Sponsors for the event are Accenture, Motilal Oswal, CapGemini, Nestle. There will be an inauguration held on the 22nd Feb,08. Global Business School & Lokmat Yuwa Manch, Nagpur organized WIZARD 07 a B-school quiz by the Raisoni Group. The quiz was held on 7 April and the quizmaster was Andrew Scolt.
New Delhi
Delhi has an eclectic range of quizzes. Engineering colleges such as IIT Delhi, NSIT and Delhi College of Engineering, and Hindu College are known for their quizzes and quizzing talent. Hindu College was the only general college to qualify for the inaugural University Challenge Quiz conducted by Siddhartha Basu and it has an active quiz club called Manthan. Prolific quizzer and captain Abhishek Sengupta led Hindu College to the finals of the inaugural edition of the University Challenge.
Quizzing suffers because of large distances and problems in commuting within the city. There is a somewhat better school quizzing circuit. Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, Jaspal Kaur Public School ,Army Public School Noida, DPS Rohini, Vasant Valley, Scindia School, DPS Dwarka, DPS RK Puram, Mother's International, Springdales, St Columba's, Manav Sthali School and Father Agnel are the major schools that quiz. Some others include the Doon School Quiz and the JTM Gibson Quiz in Mayo College, Ajmer. The Columban Open Quiz, organised by St. Columba's School and conducted by Adittya Nath Mubayi and Kunal Savarkar, is among the biggest inter-school quizzes in North India.
Amongst the business schools in the National Capital Region (NCR), FMS,CBS, IIFT, IMT Ghaziabad, IMI and MDI Gurgaon have strong business quizzers. Open quizzing is almost non-existent because of the distances. Most college fests in Delhi have at least one quiz. Such quizzes do not see a lot of attendance but there are some dedicated quizzers who make it a point to attend.
There has been a resurrection in Open Quizzing in Delhi started by some eminent quizzers of immigrant and resident origin, who are striving to restore the open quizzing culture in the NCR. An informal body called the Kutub Quizzers was formed in 2006 and it has held numerous open quizzes since then. Kutub Quizzers plans to ramp up both frequency and variety of quizzes in 2007-2008.
Varanasi
Varanasi has emerged as the second capital of quizzing in eastern India after Kolkata , largely due to the enthusiasm of the quizzing fraternity of the Banaras Hindu University, which regularly features among the winners at the National Youth Festival Quizzes. The awareness about quizzing at the school level is also on the ascent with Siddhartha Basu having conducted quizzes at Sunbeam School, Varanasi in the last 2 years.
Quiz clubs such as IT-BHU's Squizit and Republic Day Quizzers conduct meetings every weekend with people of many nationalities taking active part.
Hyderabad
Hyderabad has perhaps been the grand-daddy of the Quizzing movement in India, with K-Circle K-Circle, a club dedicated exclusively to quizzing, starting up in 1972, and growing strongly to date. Originally a shortened form of "Knowledge Circle", K-Circle has since stayed with the abbreviated version of its name and has met religiously every single Friday (bar a Good Friday or two) at the YMCA in Secunderabad for over 35 years. Since early September 2007, KCircle changed the traditional Friday meeting time and has now started meeting on Saturday evenings from 4:30 to 6:00 PM.
Many accomplished quizzers have been associated with K-Circle over the years - with several of them going on to play starring roles at National-level Quizzes including the Northstar Quiz in the 1980s, IISc Open (B'lore), the IIT Madras Mardi Gras Quizzes of the same vintage and India's version of BBC Mastermind in the 90s.
A typical K-Circle meeting consists of a quiz of 70 to 120 questions where every person participates in his / her individual capacity. Quizmasters come from the Club's membership and pick either general topics, or pre-announce a specialised quiz on a niche area of interest.
Schools such as the Hyderabad Public School Begumpet,St.Paul's High School, Hyderguda, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Jubileehills HPS Ramanthapur, Little Flower High School, NASR, Gitanjali, Kendriya Vidyalaya Picket and other large Kendriya Vidyalayas, Niraj Public School, St.Patrick's High School, Little Flower Junior College and Johnson Grammar School have an excellent quizzing record over the years in local events as well as nationwide TV quizzes.
Chennai
Quizzing in Chennai takes place in the many institutions of higher learning located in the city, such as the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. The Quiz Foundation of India conducts well-attended fortnightly meetings.
Two important highlights of the Madras quizzing calendar are the Landmark Quiz and the Odyssey Quiz, held on the Indian Independence Day (15 August) and Republic Day (26 January) respectively.
There's also the IIT-Madras open quiz and other quizzes held during their annual cultural festival Saarang. There's also The All women Duchess Quiz, conducted by QFI regular Bharat Epur. Business Quizzes such as LIBA Exquizite also draw B-School and corporate quizzers.
The Quiz Foundation mailing list is available at 2
Coimbatore
PSG College of Technology, one of India's leading engineering colleges, has an active quizzing community and a great tradition. It hosts a number of quizzes during its annual cultural fests namely Renaissance and Intrams. Coimbatore Institute of Technology's BRAHMA, a yearly open quiz conducted by the Quiz Club of C.I.T attracts a fair number of participants. Occasional quizzes held in the past by the likes of Siddhartha Basu and Derek O'Brien also take place in Coimbatore and attracts a large number of enthusiasts from all over the country.
Mumbai
The main centres of Bombay Quizzing are the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, National Institute of Industrial Engineering(NITIE), Mumbai and St. Xavier's College, Bombay.
The biggest quizzes in Mumbai are the BT Acumen west zone and Prerana Business Quiz (PBQ) conducted by NITIE. PBQ is the biggest quiz interms of the prize money offered which is in the order of a lakh. Harsha Bhogle conducts BT Acumen whereas PBQ has been conducted by a host of brilliant quiz masters like Gautam Bhimani, Harsha Bhogle and Derek O'Brien.
An effort has been made to kickstart open quizzing with the coming together of quizzers as the Bombay Quiz Club 3. The BQC is now into its second season. Despite Bombay's size, the Bombay Quiz Club now has a core of 40 to 50 regulars. One of the reasons for the increase in attendance is a shift of venue to Santa Cruz (BQC is currently hosted every alternate Sunday at the offices of The Search Engine marketing firm Pinstorm), a location that is convenient for quizzers from North and South Bombay.
Typically, two quizzes are held in a month with an average attendance of 40. The numbers have been boosted with many expat quizzers from Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore and their respective clubs: K-Circle, QFI and the KQA.
Also, with Bombay being the hub of television programming in the country, a lot of quiz-based game shows are shot here.
Pune
The first time Pune quizzing came to the national scene was when the AFMC team comprising two budding doctors, Rangaraj Setlur and Kaushik Chatterjee first came runners up and then went on to win the predecessor of all Indian TV quizzes -'QUIZTIME'. Down the years, the focus from college based quizzing has slowly shifted from college based to open events, thanks to the cool calm environs of 'The Boat Club Quiz Club'.
Pune, like Bangalore has a large number of colleges and IT companies, and hence has a very strong quizzing tradition. Pune Quizzing is very college-driven, with students of many colleges like Fergusson College, the College of Engineering, Pune the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), the Sinhgad College of Engineering (SCOE), the Army Institute of Technology, the Pune Institute of Computer Technology and the Vishwakarma Institute of Technology taking a keen interest in quizzing. B-Schools like SIBM, SCMHRD,SITM and SIMS are also very strong in the Pune quizzing circuit. SITM organizes the Telecom GrandMasters (TGM) quiz every year. Several people who have passed out of college and are working (quite often at one of several software firms located in Pune) are also active quizzers.
Pune Quizzes generally have two-member teams, and have mostly shifted to the Infinite bounce format from the Direct & Pass format. An interesting peculiarity of Pune Quizzing is that here, Infinite Bounce is called Infinite Rebounds, a name has so far not been observed to be used anywhere else. There is no formal Quizzing Association in Pune, though there are weekly informal quiz meetings at the COEP Boat Club.
Guwahati
Close on the heels of the ‘Eddie Hyde Memorial Quiz’ (the first open quiz in India) in Calcutta in 1967, was held the first quiz contest in Assam in the same year. It was held in Cotton College, Guwahati as a part of the annual college week festival of the college. Prof. Dilip Kumar Baruah and Prof. Dilip Kakoty of Cotton College conducted the quiz that was won by an all-ladies team. The first open quiz in Assam was organized by a socio-cultural organization called Agrani in 1969. In the seventies, four to five quizzes were held annually; and in the eighties and nineties, this figure went up to more than twenty. Apart from the general quizzes, quizzes on specialized topics viz. sports, science, environment, music and cinema were also held from time to time. The first ever TV quiz show in Assam went on air on 24 March 1985 on Doordarshan.
In 1989, three major quiz shows were held in Assam. The North East Regional Inter College Invitational Quiz (NERICIQ) organized by Jyoti, a socio-cultural organization from Silchar, was the first among the three. It was followed by an All-Northeast Open Quiz organized by Sanskritiki at Guwahati; and finally, the Oil India Limited came up with another good quiz named ‘Pankaj Sharma Memorial Quiz’. Celebrity quizmasters from Delhi and Kolkata conducted all the aforementioned quizzes. The nineties saw some more exciting quizzes being held in Guwahati. The Northstar and the Tea Centre quizzes became highly popular, as some of the big names from the Indian quizzing arena conducted them.
There were many other quiz contests that were held from time to time in Assam. Guwahati became the capital of quizzing in the Northeast. In the nineties, a quiz club named Guwahati Quiz Foundation was formed that had almost all the reputed quizzers of the region as its members. However, within a few years time, the group became inactive and later, defunct.
Quizzing continues on a smaller scale in Guwahati, with groups like Trivia Bytes Creations organizing quizzes like "Cop Quest" (with the Assam police) as well as pub quizzes, quizzes over Yahoo messenger etc. Besides several school quizzes, there is also the "IITG Alcheringa Quiz", organised by the IIT Guwahati as part of their annual festival Alcheringa.Another important quiz is the General quiz in Techniche,the annual techno fest of IITG.Trivia Bytes Creations also organised 'IQuations 2007' (29th and 30th September 2007), a two day long quiz festival, with six different quizzes conducted by various quiz masters. Cop Quest,which has been organised annually since 2004,has turned out to be the biggest quiz in the entire North-Eastern region of the country. The Quiz organised by Junior Doctor's Association, GMCH in memory of the founder principal of Gauhati Medical College during SYNCHISIS every year is also a huge draw.This is being organised annually since 2002 and gives out good prizes.
Rourkela
National Institute of Technology Rourkela has an active tradition of quizzing. Quizzes are held in its tech and spring fests, with participation from all over the country.
Types of Quizzes in India
School Quizzes
School Quizzes in India are often conducted by outside organisations, and not set by the schools themselves, as is the case in college quizzes. Many inter-school quizzes are conducted every year in major Indian cities, such as the The Hindu Young World Quiz, organised by the The Hindu, conducted by V.V. Ramanan, and held in 12 cities, is reckoned by many to be the largest live quiz for high school students. The 2005 edition saw a total of nearly 5000 teams taking part across the cities.
There is also The Times of India Fun-Da-Mental Quiz, earlier known as Times Newswise Quiz and the Limca Quiz. The Bournvita Quiz and ESPN Sports quizzes are popular school quizzes on TV (see sections below). TCS IT Wiz is an IT quiz for schools held across 8 cities of India since 1999.
The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) conducts two nationwide school quizzes, the CBSE Heritage India Quiz (conducted by Quizcraft- Adittya Nath Mubayi and Kunal Savarkar since 2003) and the CBSE Intel Science Quiz (conducted by Pickbrain). Each year over a thousand schools participate at over 25 venues across the nation.
Almost every city has regular quizmasters on the school and college circuit. TV quiz masters including Siddhartha Basu, Harsha Bhogle, and Derek O'Brien (as well as his brothers Andy and Barry), have also competed in school quizzes.
Open Quizzes
Open quizzes are those quizzes that do not have any restriction on the participants with respect to age, club, etc. Unlike college quizzes, they are open to everyone who is interested in participating. K-Circle Open which was for sometime out of action has been revived for the past two years attracting people from different parts of the country. The Landmark quiz, conducted by Landmark, the bookstore, in Bangalore and Chennai is another popular open quiz. BRAHMA an open quiz conducted by Quiz club of Coimbatore Institute of Technology is held at Coimbatore a week prior to Landmark Quiz, also attracts fair number of participants
Web and Email Quizzes
There are many Yahoo groups that several Indian quizzers are signed up to, and that carry regular quizzes set by various list members.
One of the oldest is Quiznet, which started off in the late 1990s as quiznet@alpha.ece.ucsb.edu, a quiz mailing list that mostly had alumni from KREC Surathkal. Several quizzers from KCircle Hyderabad piled on to the list. The Bangalore Quiz group 4 is also very active online.
Other online quiz groups
There are several online quiz groups now, several of which were formed by quizzers who met each other on quiznet and on various offline quiz groups, catering to quizzers with shared special interests, or quizzers from quiznet who knew each other and formed smaller communities.
Inter-collegiate Quizzes
One of the oldest quizzes in intercollegiate sector is the illustrious SHYAM BHATT QUIZ held by Armed Forces Medical College, Pune since 1984. This quiz is in memoriam of a great quizzer who met with an untimely end, Shyam Bhatt. The quiz has set high standards right through the years and has been a torch bearer in PUNE circle of quizzing.
Several colleges around the country have a quiz as part of their annual cultural fest. Colleges like the IITs and BITS Pilani, have regular open quizzes, besides a series of other quizzes (thematic quizzes on literature, sports etc, as well as daily quizzes) and an active quizzing community.
The annual cultural fests of other colleges in several Indian cities too have their own quizzes, some of which are quite popular and attract quizzers from around India.
Nihilanth is an IIT - IIM quiz that covers the seven IITs and six IIMs in India. The first Nihilanth was held at IIM Indore during 2003, followed by quizzes at IIT Delhi (Nihilanth 2005) and IIM Calcutta (Nihilanth 2006).
BITS Pilani has couple of quizzes that are conducted during its annual academic festival, APOGEE. OHT - OverHead Transmission - is a quiz open for all. BOB - Brain of BITS - is a quiz which is exclusively for BITS Pilani students. Apart from these, a sports quiz is conducted during its annual sports event, BOSM. Additionally, OQ (Oasis Quiz) and AVQ (Audio Visual Quiz) take place during its cultural extravaganza OASIS. All the quizzes receive an overwhelming response of enthusiastic quizzers.
IMS Quotient is an all India inter collegiate quiz, held across 8 cities.
Quizzing by Topic
Business
Extremely popular among Business School students and some IT professionals, these quizzes test you on knowledge about advertising, financial and business terms, history of famous businesses, corporate bigwigs and other such fields. The prize money in Business Quizzes is more than that in other quizzes. Prizes in Business Quizzes may include Cars and MP3 Players among other things. The Brand Equity Quiz, the Business Today Acumen Quiz and the Tata Crucible Quiz are three big Business quizzes held in India every year.
Indian Heritage
An innovative and popular annual contest that is organised by the Central Board of Secondary Education- the CBSE Heritage India Quiz- sees upwards of a thousand schools participating across the nation. First organised in 2001, the quiz has a pyramidal structure and involves a preliminary written test paper, followed by regional semi-finals and finals (stage shows conducted at various locations) followed by a National level contest- including pre-finals as well as a grand finale. This quiz was conducted by Simanta Mohanty in 2001-2002, and subsequently by quizcraft. The winners are Somerville School, NOIDA (2001,2002,2006), D.P.S. R.K.Puram, New Delhi (2003,2004) and Anandalaya School, Anand, Gujarat.
TV Quizzes
Discover India
This was an all India solo quiz based on Indian culture and heritage, conducted by the Tourism Department on the National Television Channel DD1 in 1987. Nagesh, from Calicut, Kerala, was the proud winner of the then princely sum of 50,000 rupees.
64 contestants qualified through a written question format that appeared in all leading dailies of the country.
India was split into five subjects: Old, Young, Wild, Beautiful and Big.
The themes were carried into the TV rounds also. Though the contestants and the rounds were never planned to be on a zonal basis. Jayant Kriplani, then a popular TV star, was the quizmaster.
Quiz Time
QuizTime was an intercollegiate quiz that ran in the national channel Doordarshan in 1985, 1986 and 1988. It was hosted by Siddhartha Basu in all three seasons. It was the enormous success of QuizTime that made quizzing a popular form of entertainment for the general public.
A college was represented by a two member team. Teams were selected for the zonal preliminaries from the East, West, North and South Zones after a written test. Each quiz brought four teams against each other. Winners of the zonal preliminaries met in the zonal final, and the winners of these contested the national final.
After QuizTime, Basu hosted the Spectrum Quiz which brought together quizzers from the seven SAARC countries, and was won by an India-Bangladesh team.
It was a unique concept in the heyday of SAARC. Organised by the Ministry of External Affairs and conducted by Basu (lovingly called as Babu by his admirers), the quiz had two representatives from each country. Maldives could not take part due to a coup in the country.
The two who represented India were selected through a rigorous qualification test. This test pitted (in the India rounds as part of the TV quiz), 18 of the best quizzers of India chosen on their performance on TV quizzes from 1985 onwards. These included winners and finalists of Quiz Time 85, 86 & 88 & Discover India 87.
Mastermind India
Mastermind India is based on the British television quiz Mastermind. Each round saw four contestants taking the black chair one by one, and facing rapid fire questions on subjects of their own choosing in the first half, and on general knowledge in the second half. One of the hallmarks of the Indian show was the staging of the contest at heritage sites across the country. Mastermind India was hosted by Siddhartha Basu, and had five seasons, telecast on BBC World, the last one being in 2002.
There are 6 volumes of Mastermind India books, featuring all the questions and answers of each series, one for each year, including a hardback volume for series 1-3.
University Challenge India
University Challenge India is based on the British University Challenge. It is hosted by Siddhartha Basu. It follows the American College Bowl format. There were two seasons, in 2003-2004 and in 2004-2005. The first season was won by the Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai and the concluding season '04,'05 was won by NSIT, Delhi.
India Quiz on DD2
This was an India specific quiz run on the Doordarshan National network and the Doordarshan Metro Channel. It was hosted by Siddhartha Basu.The last season was in 1997 and was won by Law College,Ernakulam,Kerala.
Kaun Banega Crorepati
Kaun Banega Crorepati was a television show that aired on Star Plus starting from 2000. It was based on the popular British show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. It gained popularity and attracted a large number of viewers primarily due to its quizmaster, Indian actor Amitabh Bachchan, whose resonant baritone voice, down-to-earth manner, and characteristic dialogue (which would later become pop-culture catch-phrases) had appealed to the public.
In 2005, the show was restarted after a four-year hiatus, and renamed Kaun Banega Crorepati Dwitiya (KBC the Second) in which the prize amount was doubled. This season came to a premature end when Amitabh Bachchan had to be hospitalized for surgery.
Research for this quiz was provided by Siddhartha Basu and his team. Regional language variations of KBC have been produced for other TV channels, particularly in Tamil, with local actors and TV personalities taking over the quizmaster role.
KBC was again started on Star Plus in 2007 , recently. And it again gained popularity as the host this time was Shah Rukh Khan,Super star of Bollywood at present.
The Bournvita Quiz Contest
The Cadbury Bournvita Quiz Contest (BQC) started as a radio show on the 12th of April, 1972 on Vividh Bharati. Fifty- format of the radio show to a two-member team format. Telecast on Indian cable TV channels, (first on Zee TV and then Sony TV) is the longest running school quiz show on television in India. It is hosted by Derek O'Brien, a popular quizmaster in India. CBQC, in a new avatar, will be back on POGO Channel from 14 October 2007. In a revolutionary concept, Derek has managed to pit exuberance against experience in a one-of-its-kind students versus teachers quiz contest. The idea behind it is to bridge the generation gap and let the children know that you can have fun with teachers but you cannot poke fun at teachers. 5
India's Child Genius
India's Child Genius is another Siddhartha Basu creation. The winners were:-
- First - Shubham Prakhar
- Second - Shachit Iyer
- Third - Ashwath Rabindranath
National Parliamentary Quiz
National Parliamentary Quiz was hosted on DD1 by Siddhartha Basu,in 1994.
BSNL Sports Quiz
"BSNL Sports Quiz" hosted by Sumanth C Raman BSNL Sports quiz is one of the longest running quizzes in South India.It is being telecasted on Saturdays at 10.10pm on DD Podhigai(a regional version of Doordarshan)
Other Quizzes
SAARC Inter-University Quiz
This was held as part of the official SAARC countries youth Festival hosted by Government of India at Gulbarga, Karnataka in 1999.The Calicut University team represented India and won the quiz, defeating Sri Lanka by a huge margin.
The Official SAARC quiz
A quiz that appeared on television, it was produced by Rupavahini (SLBC) in 1994, and hosted by Ravi John, a well known host from Sri Lanka (in which Adittya Mubayi of India came 2nd), and the next year by Synergy Communications (for DD) and hosted by the Grand Old Man of TV quizzing - Siddhartha Basu. It then went off the air, and has not reappeared on TV till date.