Lupin Aptivate's Achchi Bhookh School Foodie Quiz, which set records last season for being the largest online food quiz in Asia, had a thrilling new avatar this year with two additional action-packed on-ground rounds - the City Cluster Finals and the National Finale.
Following a tremendous response from families across India with 22,000-plus registrations for the online qualification round in October, the Achchi Bhookh food caravan journeyed across India to Chandigarh, Dehradun, Kanpur, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Meerut, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, and New Delhi, meeting the Top 100-200 teams from each of these cities for an exciting on-ground quiz where parents and their eager children went from battling over nutrition and eating habits to actually bonding over good food, good hunger, and healthy eating!
Also Read: Lupin Activate Achchi Bhookh Quiz 2024: How Parent-Child Quizzes Teach Food And Nutrition Values
Comprising a written elimination round followed by a stage final for the top 6 teams, each leg of the City Cluster round was characterised by amazing displays of food knowledge, good-natured competition, and adrenaline-pumping moments of high-octane quizzing action by children and parents alike.
Some of India's best quizmasters, including Meghashyam Shirodkar and Kunal Malhotra, took the parent-child teams through their paces, with mouth-watering rounds themed around foods from India and the world, innovative ingredients, traditional cooking practices, the power of Ayurveda and nature in achchi bhookh, and many more. The family teams were more than up for the challenge, and time and again, both quizmaster and audience alike were left amazed by the sheer brilliance and chutzpah on display!
From Ludhiana to Lucknow, Meerut to Mumbai, and Chandigarh to New Delhi, young kids of Grades 1-6 cudgelled their brains along with their proud parents to answer questions ranging from an Italian bank that accepts cheese as collateral for loans to a Hyderabad-based company that makes edible cutlery to reduce the environmental impact, to Alphonso mangoes being exchanged for Harley-Davidson bikes in Indo-US import wars, to an Ayurvedic ingredient in Aptivate syrup that contains a whopping five of the six chief tastes - sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, and astringent (the answer was amla)!
Along the way, there was joy, despair, elation, and laughter aplenty as the young parents and their eager kiddos experienced the highs and lows of keenly competitive quizzing under the spotlight. New Delhi turned out in force, with over 150 teams turning up for a truly carnival atmosphere, whereas Mumbai and Navi Mumbai both witnessed nerve-wracking tiebreaker rounds; Chandigarh had a thriller of a final of its own to match the festive finale that Meerut enjoyed on-stage. Each city champion automatically qualified for the National Finale Round in Mumbai, along with three Lucky Loser teams who were the top-scoring first runners-up across all the cluster locations.
The twelve champion teams from the City Cluster rounds then went toe-to-toe (or stomach-to-stomach, maybe!) with each other in Mumbai for a battle royale to crown India's Achchi Bhookh Foodie Quiz champion family in Season 3 of the Aptivate Quiz. The morning session saw one of India's finest quizmasters and co-founder CEO of HT Labs, Avinash Mudaliar enthuse the teams and audience alike with his signature brand of energetic and inclusive quizzing during the two national semi-finals. Each quiz saw a group of six teams pitted against one another, vying for one of the three coveted spots in the national final.
Teams and audiences alike were swept in Avinash's infectious energy as he enthused and electrified the crowd with foodie fundaes about Noor Jehan inventing matka kulfi, the intricacies of Hyderabadi Zafrani Pulao, and why sugar is called cheeni in India! Six teams, representing Ludhiana, Chandigarh, and Mumbai-Navi Mumbai (two each), qualified from these rollercoaster contests to stake their claim in the grand national final that took place in the afternoon.
One of India's favourite celebrity chefs, actress and model-turned-chef Amrita Raichand swapped her toque for the quizmaster's hat as she quizzed the top six teams in an engaging finale. Children and parents put their heads together one final time in an exhilarating display of knowledge and foodie IQ to expertly tackle tricky questions like the ancient origins of popcorn in 4700 BC, a Pokemon made up of rock salt crystals whose name contains the chemical symbol for common salt (NaCl), and Milaf Cola, the world's very first cola made from dates, to name just a few.
A glittering panel of senior executives from Lupin Life and HT Labs graced the prize distribution function, giving away the glittering trophies as well as grand prizes, including laptops, high-end bicycles, tablets, smartwatches, et al. The day's proceedings wound up with a strong commitment from the sponsor’s Lupin Life to come back next year with an even bigger and better season of the Aptivate Achchi Bhookh Quiz, with a desire to extend it beyond the national boundaries to South East Asia and ultimately the world.