The search for the most intelligent and brainy team of school children finally ended today. Little Flower School, Jamshedpur was declared the winner of the mega finals of Tata Steel Centenary Inter - School Quiz held at XLRI Auditorium. In a nail biting finish the winners defeated the first Runners up team - comprising of DAV, Ranchi in the tie-breaker round. The team of Anirudh S and Ravi Shankar from Vidya Niketan Public School, Bangalore stood third. The winning team comprising of Nitish Ranjan and Pranjal Kishore received the Tata Steel Centenary Quiz Trophy and a digital camera each by the Chief Guest - Ms. Bachendri Pal, Chief - Tata Steel Adventure Foundation - Tata Steel. The other two winning participants were given MP3 players. The 10 finalists were gifted a Titan watch each. Conducted by none other than Giri Balasubramaniam aka 'Pickbrain', who is known for his quizzing skills, the quiz was a blend of wit, smartness, presence of mind and comprehension. It was a pleasure to watch young minds at work and tackle the variety of questions put forward to them by the innovative quiz master.

There were a total of 6 innovative rounds specially created by Giri Balasubramaniam which had a perfect mix of creativity, 'out of the box' thinking, science, technology, music, art and an array of other fields.

According to Ms. Bachendri Pal, who is the first woman to climb Mt. Everest, "It was a pleasure to see young minds battle it out on stage with each other. The display of intelligence by these young school children was as though I was standing before a mountain of knowledge, waiting to be climbed. I would like to congratulate Tata Steel, that has created benchmarks in corporate sustainability for bringing together, young minds from across the country on and give them an opportunity to compete with one another on a platform of this nature."

A total of 27 outstation teams along with 247 teams from 34 schools of Jamshedpur participated in the written preliminary rounds. The preliminary round short listed 10 finalists who made it to the stage to face the volley of questions by Giri Balasubramaniam. The top 10 schools that made it to the podium are as follows -

•  Kerala Samajam Model School, Jamshedpur

•  Loyola School, Jamshedpur

•  Jamshedpur Public School, Jamshedpur

• Hill Top School, Jamshedpur

• Sacred Heart Convent School, Jamshedpur

• Little Flower School, Jamshedpur

• Krishna Public School, Bhillai

• Vidya Niketan Public School, Bangalore

• DAV Chandrashekharpur, Bhubaneswar

• DAV Shyamali, Ranchi

Tata Steel Centenary Inter - School Quiz - So Far…

The Quiz has travelled to 9 different cities and the top 3 winners from each centre was a called to Jamshedpur to participate in the Mega - Finals. The quiz received an overwhelming response from across the country with participation of almost 800 teams from different schools. Jamshedpur had 501 children from 34 different schools participating in the preliminary round.

All students in the age group of 13-18 years who possessed the intellectual acumen were eligible to participate in the quiz. There was no entry fee and the quiz covered a wide range of subjects like general awareness, sports, history, geography and science.

As a part of the ongoing year long centenary celebrations planned by Tata Steel to mark its 100 years, the Inter - School Centenary Quiz has been one of the key highlights. This series of quiz has travelled to the numerous cities and towns in India including Jamadoba, West Bokaro, Naomundi, Chennai, Tarapore, Kolkata, Haldia, and Bangalore and finally culminated in the long awaited Mega Finals in Jamshedpur - the genesis ground of Tata Steel, 100 years ago. This was the place where it all started and the dream envisaged by our Founder Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata was turned into reality by his successors and has been put on the path of development and expansion by the subsequent generations following the guidelines and principles put forward by our fore fathers, 100 years ago.

Organised with the objective to promote the culture of quest for knowledge amongst students and enable them to emerge as enriched well-informed and global citizens, this is Tata Steel's way to help youngsters and students be a part of the celebrations and give them a platform to display their knowledge and intelligence.

It is a proud moment to celebrate 100 years of the first private sector steel plant in India, which had started with a production capacity of 1, 00,000 tonnes has today transformed into a global giant with a production capacity of almost 28.1 MT. Continuing this trend, of reaching new levels and creating new benchmarks, Tata Steel Centenary Inter - School Quiz was a platform for increasing the competitive attitude amongst the youth which is essential for the building of the nation.