Think tank: IIFT's Swarnim Bharadwaj and Arka Bhattacharya score in the debate competition

The victors: Arjun Siva and Vikram Venkateswaran of IMT Ghaziabad emerge victors in the quiz contest

Are you ready? Harsha Bhogle quizzes participants

Prized moments: The audience stayed riveted throughout

Winning moment: Acumen 2006 host Harsha Bhogle with the Van Heusen audience bumper prize winner Deepti Sen

Dynamic duo: Alumni quiz prize winners Rohan Khanna (extreme left) and Shubhendu Saha (extreme right) with Dev Bhattacharya, Pavan Varshnei and Harsha Bhogle

The Business Today-Aditya Birla Group Acumen is back with a bang. The fifth edition of one of the hottest debate and quiz competitions in the country, Acumen 2006 received a huge participation. With the first regional round at IIFT, New Delhi, going to the wire on a thrilling note on August 4 &5, Acumen 2006 will now move to Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai to represent South, East and West zones respectively.

The North Zone competition opened with preliminaries on August 4. There were 40 B-School teams each in the quiz and debate rounds. The debating teams were divided into four groups of 10 each to discuss issues as diverse as Media Fragmentation, PSU Divestment, Magic of Foreign Brands on Indian Consumers and Work experience a mandatory qualification for B-Schools. After the daylong rigour, four semi-finalists each in debate and quiz rounds stood out.

On the following day, the teams representing Indian Institute of Foreign Trade (IIFT), Management Development Institute, Faculty of Management Studies, University of Delhi and Amity Business School faced each other in the debate semi-finals and finals thereafter, while the teams from IMT Ghaziabad, Business School, University of Jammu, International Management Institute, Delhi and Delhi School of Economics fielded questions in the quiz finals.

In the debate semi-finals, Soumya Mittal and Priyanka Todi from MDI, Gurgaon, won over Nishika Bajaj and Ankush Trakkru from FMS. The topic: "Marketing Research is a necessary evil for business decision makers". The MDI team said market research was necessary, but they were against the term 'evil', and put forth market research as an investment.

For the second set of semi-finalists, the debate topic was, "Leaders aren't born but made". Swarnim Bharadwaj and Arka Bhattacharya from home team iift defeated Chhanda Das and Ruchi Sharma from Amity Business School, with a forceful presentation in favour of the motion.

Soon IIFT and MDI teams came face to face to fight over the topic "Amitabh everywhere: celebrity endorsements don't work". The IIFT team, which said celebrity endorsements drive the aspirations of target consumers, emerged as winners of Acumen 2006 North Zone Debate finals.

The four teams in the quiz finals fought it out hard to survive seven rounds of rigorous questioning. By the end of it, IMT Ghaziabad emerged as winners of the quiz finals. The B-School Alumni quiz saw participation from eight of the old students of some premier B-Schools. The four teams comprised Rohan Khanna from FMS, Delhi, (currently working with Accenture) and Shubhendu Saha from School of Management, Allahabad (currently with DTZ); Sanjay Verma from MDI, Gurgaon (Cushman & Wakefield) and Anirvan Bhadra from Symbiosis Institute of Management (ICICI Bank); Sujit Varkey from Xavier Institute of Social Service (NTPC) and Rakesh Taklikar from FMS, Delhi (Air India); and Akshay Bhagotra from Amity (Asia Pacific) and Manvendra Pal Singh Khati from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (Reliance). While Sujit and Rakesh gave a close fight, Rohan and Shubhendu took huge lead to emerge clear winners.

The winners received prizes from Pavan Varshnei, Publishing Director, Business Today, Dev Bhattacharya, Senior President, Corporate Strategy and Business Development, Aditya Birla Management Corporation Limited and Harsha Bhogle, host, Acumen 2006. The prizes were sponsored by Van Heusen, Lenovo and Philips. The event's media partner was CNN IBN and the online media partner was PaGalGuy.com.