DPS Sharjah bags the crown at fourth UAE TCS IT Wiz

Students of Delhi Private School Sharjahwith their trophies. — KT photo by Leslie Pableo

Did you know that Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world to have an all-female Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) centre? When quizmaster Giri ‘Pickbrain’ Balasubramanium shot the question out to the participants at the fourth UAE edition of TCS IT Wiz, it was the adults who were seen scratching their heads. The youngsters answered the ‘extremely challenging’ IT quiz with absolute ease.

Conducted and organised by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the quiz, which was held on Saturday, received an overwhelming response from schools in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Al Ain, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah. Students from over 50 schools participated in the international edition of the inter school IT quiz held at Shaikh Rashid Auditorium, Indian High School, Dubai.

After an interesting preliminary round and some arduous and intense final rounds of quizzing in a nail-biting finish, Madhur Singal (17) and Madhav Subramanyam (17) from Delhi Private School, Sharjah walked away with the coveted winner’s trophy, along with an iPad Air and other prizes, closely followed Our Own High School, Al Warqa'a as runners-up, who received their trophy along with an iPad mini.

Varun Kapur, vice president and head - Middle East, Africa and Mediterranean region, TCS, and Manish Prabhu, country manager for UAE, TCS, distributed the prizes along with other dignitaries.

The winners will represent the UAE in the international finals set to take place in India at end of this year.

The winners, who were the runners-up last year, were ecstatic about winning this year. “We really worked hard without any expectations. We came here to put in our best and we are really glad we won this quiz,” said Madhav. The boys said they spend an average of three to four hours online every day and a lot of the research content came in from Wikipedia and quiz books.

“The more challenging part of the quiz was the round called ‘Internet of things’. It required some lateral and out-of-the-box thinking. Each round, however, was a brilliant challenge,” said Madhur. The boys said the standard of quizzing has really come up over the years since the inception of the TCS IT Wiz.

“It was mind-boggling sitting in the audience. It is indeed enlivening for us all to see an excellent display of tech talent and knowledge from these finalists. It’s a proud moment for us every year when we host this quiz to see that the future is indeed bright and in safe hands. We in TCS believe in engaging and connecting with youth and help them realise their potential” said Varun Kapur.

The four other finalists who made it on stage included Gems Modern Academy, Dubai; Our Own English High School, Al Warqa; Al Diyafah High School, Dubai; and Delhi Private School, Dubai.

Twitter contest

This year the quiz contest caught the student twitteratis’ fancy in the auditorium. An interactive live Twitter contest was organised during the quiz to engage with the students in real-time as a part of the social media outreach ++programme. Dubai witnessed a tweet count of 1,584.

This year, the rounds at the regional levels were based on current technology happenings. Hence the rounds were aptly christened Data Clouds, Big Data Visualisation, IOT-Internet of Things and Pin Trust. The questions were innovative and ingenious, spanning the IT spectrum and foraying into contemporary topics. The ‘Data Clouds’ introduced the concept of having a package delivered via the Amazon drone consignment.

dhanusha@khaleejtimes.com