Press Releases

Sasken successfully hosts ‘KenQuiz’, Bangalore’s First Corporate Technology Quiz

Bangalore, 14th July 2011 – Sasken Communication Technologies Limited (BSE: 532663 & NSE: SASKEN), a leading embedded communications solutions company successfully hosted the KenQuiz TechMaster Challenge at its premises on 2nd July 2011. An enthusiastic audience of over 50 teams convened at Sasken’s corporate HQ situated at Bangalore for the daylong event.

The Winning Team of the KenQuiz TechMaster Challenge, Mitesh Agarwal, Sun Microsystems and  Jayakanthan Ranganathan, TCS took home  the ‘KenQuiz TechMaster Trophy’ and a cash prize of Rs.30,000. The First Runners-up team (Srikanth Nori and Abhishek Upadhya, Ittiam Systems) bagged Rs.20,000, while the Second Runners-up Team (Thejaswi Udupa, Yahoo! and Anustup Dutta, Vertebrand Consulting) received a cash prize of Rs. 10000. The top eight teams received exclusive KenQuiz designed t-shirts along with cash vouchers.

KenQuiz is a first-of-its-kind Technology Quiz aiming to create a platform where technologists come together on a single platform, to share their passion. It was held in partnership with NASSCOM and MoMo Bangalore. KenQuiz took place in two phases. The online phase had over 800 technologists from all major companies in Bangalore and neighboring cities logging on to http://kenquiz.sasken.com to participate.

The finale conducted on 2nd July 2011 saw eight teams battling it out for the coveted KenQuiz TechMaster Title. Team Nexus, a team of reputed quizmasters based out of Bangalore, conducted the quiz. “Being the first edition of KenQuiz, the event was on par with other top corporate quizzes both in terms of quality of participation and the event itself. It will help tech quizzes now become main stream”, said Venkatesh Srinivasan, quizmaster at the KenQuiz finale event.

“I was happy to be a part of KenQuiz. The high standard in which the event was conducted truly impressed me,” said Mitesh Agarwal, Country Head, Sales Consulting at Sun Microsystems and member of the KenQuiz winning team. “I am eagerly looking forward to participating in the next edition of KenQuiz”, added Mitesh.

The event also included a panel discussion based on ‘How to Technology-Proof Your Career’. An elite panel were invited - Vinay Goel, Head of Products, Google India, Harish Vaidyanathan, Director – Evangelism, Microsoft India and Pankaj Mishra, Senior Editor at The Economic Times. All three personalities, being leaders in their own right, gave the keen audience very valuable perspectives on how to manage and ‘technology-proof’ their careers in technology. The discussion was moderated by Rajaraghavan Setlur, Associate VP, Strategy, Sasken, who is also a founding member of the Bangalore chapter of MoMo India. During the discussion, the panelists laid much emphasis on virtues such as curiosity, harnessing a spirit for entrepreneurship and maintaining a consistent hunger for learning. Another key takeaway from the discussion was the importance of being willing to adapt to climate shifts in the industry, while being emotionally detached to areas of interest that don’t seem to reap adequate benefits in terms of satisfaction and monetary gains. 

Rajiv C Mody, Chairman and CEO, Sasken said, “Being an R&D organization, technology is the core of Sasken’s business; it is what drives us. KenQuiz is just an extension of our passion for technology.”

Says Ramesh S, VP Human Resources at Sasken, “With KenQuiz, our main objective is to bring together technologists from all over on one platform and have them learn from each other, having fun at the same time. With our first edition, we certainly have achieved this. Going forward KenQuiz will be a calendared event with a special edition for our budding engineers – the ‘KenQuiz Campus’. The ultimate goal is to make KenQuiz synonymous with tech quizzing.”

For more details, please visit: http://kenquiz.sasken.com

About Sasken

Sasken (www.sasken.com) is an R&D Technology Solutions company that helps businesses across the Communication & Consumer value chain accelerate product development life cycles. Sasken offers a unique combination of R&D Consultancy, Wireless Software products, Solutions & Services for Consumer Electronics & Network Engineering Services and works with Network OEMs, Semiconductor Vendors, Terminal Device OEMs, Consumer Electronics OEMs and Operators across the world. Global Fortune 500 and Tier 1 companies in these segments are part of Sasken's customer profile.

Disclaimer on Forward Looking Statements:

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects are forward-looking statements, which involve a number of risks, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements due to risks or uncertainties associated with our expectations with respect to, but not limited to, our ability to successfully implement our strategy and our growth and expansion plans, technological changes, our exposure to market risks, general economic and political conditions in India which have an impact on our business activities or investments, changes in the laws and regulations that apply to the Indian IT services industry, including with respect to tax incentives and export benefits, adverse changes in foreign laws, including those relating to outsourcing and immigration, increasing competition in and the conditions of the Indian and global IT services industry, the prices we are able to obtain for our services, wage levels in India for IT professionals, the loss of significant customers the monetary and interest policies of India, inflation, deflation, unanticipated turbulence in interest rates, foreign exchange rates, equity prices or other rates or prices, the performance of the financial markets in India and globally, changes in domestic and foreign laws, regulations and taxes and changes in competition in the information technology/telecommunication industries. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our Red herring filing. The company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company.