Raj Dam founded QuizWorks in 2010 and built it to be among one of India’s leading quizzing companies, and in his two decades long career as a professional Quizmaster he has hosted more than a 1,000 quizzes in India and abroad. Then 2020 happened.
Part of the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Week, the Sweden India Nobel Memorial Quiz (SINMQ) is one of India's most prestigious for college students organised by the Embassy of Sweden in New Delhi, along with the Consulate General of Sweden in Mumbai. Dam and QuizWorks had the unique challenge of converting that quiz into a digital avatar.
"How you write a question really matters, especially for the new digital avatar the quiz had to evolve into. With people participating over devices instead of being physically present at the venue, we needed to ensure that questions were not Googleable. We also had to introduce new rules like limited time to answer questions and no passing as we usually had to," remarks Dam, adding,
Given that QuizWorks has worked with various organisations across not-for-profit, public sector undertakings, and Fortune 500 organisations in India, Middle East and North America over the last decade, this year was what Dam diplomatically calls a "new learning experience".
"Our physical business was utterly decimated and we had to invest heavily in digitising the quizzing experience. Over the last several months, we tooled out new formats, and then took that learning to the Nobel Memorial Quiz," elaborates Dam.
The semi-finals and finals of the SINMQ were held in their new digital format on December 7 and 9. The quiz was curated by Dam, and tested the students' knowledge on Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize and Nobel Laureates. There were also general questions around Swedish Innovations, industries, history, society and culture.
Preetham Upadhya from Shailesh J Mehta School of Management IIT Bombay is the winner of SINMQ 2020, with the student taking home Rs 1,00,000 as prize money. This is the third time since its inception in 2008 that the winner of SINMQ is from IIT Bombay.
Over 1,500 students participated in SINMQ 2020 from different cities of India. Dr Murtuza, who is pursuing MD in Radio Diagnosis from Deccan College of Medical Sciences, Hyderabad, secured the second and Sunny Aryan from Pandit Ugam Pandey College secured the third position.
"One good that has happened as a result of the pandemic is the democratisation of quizzing around India and the world. People are no longer limited by having to go to physical venues in big cities to be able to participate in quiz competitions, as now there are so many digital platforms. We have seen quizzing take off worldwide as people are more restricted to homes and want to connect with other people. Quizzing is a great medium for that," concludes Dam.
In a nutshell
The semi-finals and finals of the SINMQ were held in their new digital format on December 7 and 9. The quiz was curated by Dam, and tested the students’ knowledge on Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Prize and Nobel Laureates. There were also general questions around Swedish Innovations, industries, history, society and culture.