Quintessential – Feb 13, 2014

Sumanth Patlolla

Life isn‘t fair. So isn‘t this Quiz!

Elimination Round

• Written format

• 1 point per question

• Part-answers considered only if deemed appropriate

• Quiz-master is God (atleast for this session)

• Sit back and enjoy, even if you haven’t made it further!

The Mahe river, a South Indian river flowing through Kerala, is

supposedly the most polluted river there. During the period of

British rule, it separated the British-ruled Talasery and Mahe (a

part of Pondicherry).

What nickname did the river get during British Raj because of

this?

The English Channel

As it separated the British-ruled Talasery from French-

ruled Mahe

Connect

HUGH JACKMAN

• First Indian woman to graduate from Harvard

Business School

• Also the first woman to guide the functioning of a

foreign bank in India

• Currently the Group General Manager and Country

Head of HSBC India

Naina Lal Kidwai, the President of the Federation of

Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI)

Which two Tata companies invested in a JV with

Bridgestone to create Bridgestone India ltd?

Later on, it had become a 100% foreign-owned

entity after divestment.

ACC and TELCO (now Tata Motors)

Connect

Vivek Ranadive

This word was first used by cobblers. They would

place someone‘s foot and mark it to make pattern

for shoes.

Now this is an industry standard term.

What?

Benchmarking

The Hindu reported that it is Independent India’s

biggest structure.

It surpasses Rashtrapati Bhavan in size and equals it in

grandeur. It was unveiled in December 2008. With a

floor area of more than 9.6 lakh square feet,

the structure was designed by architect Hafiz

Contractor, and houses seven blocks with eighty four

100-seaters, three 200-seaters. For comparison, the

floor area of the Rashtrapati Bhavan is 2 lakh square

feet as per the official website of the President.

What?

Global education centre, Infosys, Mysore

CEAT India Ltd was set up in 1958 as a JV

between CEAT of Italy and an Indian group. It

was later sold to RPG group.

Name the Indian group.

Tata Group

In the mid 19th century, they were the largest supplier of

gun powder in the US. It comprised half the gunpowder

used during the American Civil War.

Which company?

Du Pont

Ad time….

This Indian conglomerate has the largest market in chairs

and tables business in Afghanistan. It thought of selling

bicycles in India.

But World War-2 broke out and a ship carrying

manufacturing equipments of bicycles sunk and thus they

backed out of the bicycles selling idea.

Who?

Godrej

“Epicuisine” is the name of the fine food hubs with

live kitchen.

Which retail stores recently launched this facility

where you can dine as well?

Spencers Retail

What in Tata’s is Truro, Project England and

Project Colour?

Bidding names or code-names while bidding

for Corus

Gary Gilmore, was a murderer executed by firing squad

in Utah in 1977

His last words were the inspiration for something

remarkable...

What?!

His last words being 'Let's do it'

In 2012, Nike (which wasn’t an Olympic sponsor) launched

its "Find your Greatness" campaign that featured

amateur sportsmen around the world (in places like

Jamaica, Ohio, Qatar, Nigeria, and Norway)

This made the IOC mad as it was yet another example of

Nike's clever strategy that just fell short of ambush

marketing.

What was in the campaign that slyly associated itself

with the Olympics without overtly saying so?

All the places were called "London" (such as

London, Ohio or London, South Africa) or associated

with the word "London"

Apart from public holidays, this entity has only been

closed on 2 other occasions.

One was on 8 Aug, 1855 during Ulysees Grant’s

funeral and the other time was on 29 October, 2012

due to Hurricane Sandy.

Which entity?

NYSE

The Financial Times described it as “one of the

most prominent admissions of failure for a new

mass-market consumer product since Coca-

Cola’s New Coke fiasco nearly 30 years ago.”

What are we talking about ?

Microsoft’s Windows 8

This bank’s headquarters is a twin tower

skyscraper complex, with each tower commonly

called as Credit & Debit.

Which bank?

The Deutsche Bank Twin Towers

BISP is a cash transfer program in Pakistan known as

________ Income Support Programme, which is similar

to the Direct Benefit Transfer scheme being launched

in India.

What is the missing word?

Benazir

Finals

During the 1920s, spiraling costs of labour and transport

threatened the existence of most of the group's companies.

At one point both its founder's son and his wife pledged their

personal assets to raise funds to keep one of the core

companies in business. The husband shelled out £750,000

and his wife pledged her jewellery, which included the famous

245-carat Jubilee diamond, one of the largest privately

owned gems in the world.

Name the couple and the business group.

Sir Dorabji Tata and Lady Meherbai Tata of the Tata group

Connect (please be

specific)

Catamaran, a venture capital fund set up in 2010 by

N R Narayana Murthy.

It has made investments in a few companies like Manipal

Universal Learning, SKS Microfinance, etc,..

Also an Indian sailboat with two parallel hulls known

for its lightness and agility.

Founded in the 1860s, quality has always been a hallmark for this food processing company

The term 'Quality Control' is said to have originated at this company

It was the only major food maker to have supported the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act in the US

Name it

H J Heinz

X has successfully invested in several technology

startups some of which are Skype, Foursquare, Airbnb,

Path and fab.com

X is also a co-founder of the venture capital fund A-

Grade Investments

X was recently designated as the “Product Engineer” for

Lenovo (specifically for its Yoga tablet range) and will be

providing inputs in design, specs, s/w and usage

scenarios

X is also co-founder of Katalyst Media and was the

Creative Director in a tech management firm called

Ooma

Id X

Significance: ?

Location: Vancouver, Canada

First…..

Who is this person in news recently?

#TheDarkKnight

Suhail Rizvi – the notoriously secretive largest

shareholder of Twitter

Identify the logos

Prominent logos used by AltaVista.

It was once one of the most popular search engines that

was purchased in 2003 by Yahoo!, which retained the

brand but based all AltaVista searches on its own search

engine.

On July 8, 2013, the service was shut down

This app ‘X’ claims to be able to shrink your phone’s

data consumption. The app works by compressing

the data usage from other apps, web browsing

sessions and even email, which allows users to

double or even triple the usage of their existing data

plans

Id this Israel-based company which was recently

acquired by Facebook

Connect and give funda!

To the south…

Gurdeep Singh "Ponty" Chadha

A term in the computer industry that describes a product,

typically computer hardware or software, that is announced

to the general public but is never actually released nor

officially cancelled.

Examples :

• ‘Chinese Democracy’, an extremely delayed album by

Guns N’ Roses which was finally released in 2008

• Starcraft: Ghost – announced in 2002 but stands cancelled

• Windows Vista, once considered to fall in this category, but

eventually surfaced after a prolonged time.

Vaporware

This brand's label, which originated in 1880s, was

redesigned in 1930 with a prominent red star. After the

Second World War in 1951 in many countries the red star

- due to its association with communism - was changed

from red to white with only a small red border. It became

completely red again in the early 1990s after Perestroika.

Name the brand

During WWII, the Allied powers, ready to invade

France had problems navigating the country as the

Axis powers had destroyed all road signs. Deeming

this entity's maps most dependable, a special

edition of its 1939 guide was reprinted for the

soldiers.

Whose maps did they use?

The Allied soldiers ended up using the Michelin

Road Guide. These guides eventually lead to the

creation of its prestigious Michelin star rating of

restaurants and chefs

What word in the world of finance comes from this

town in Belgium where 15th century merchants

met!!

This is a square in Belgium where the first stock

market was located called beurs, which then

gave rise to ‘bourse’

Way back in the history of India, this was a village

ruled by the Vaghelas. The famous artist of the

Mewati Gharana, late Maharana Jaiwant Sinh Vaghela

was from the royal family from here. He was a great

musician and went on to even be the guru of Pandit

Jasraj.

This village in modern India turned out to be one of

the newsmakers in the economic sense for being one

of the largest employers in a direct and indirect

manner when it recruited or provided employment to

over 20,000 people.

What is being described?

Sanand

This company was first registered in Lahore during

the 1930s and started operations by taking over the

distribution of Italian-made radio lamps.

Subsequently, after Independence it manufactured

India's first indigenous Astronomical Telescope that

was installed at the famous Jantar Mantar

observatory in Delhi.

By what name is this company known now?

Bajaj Electricals Limited

Baselines

•Made like no other

•The Energy of India

•We fuel amazing

•Be more everyday

•Building a better working world

•Made like no other – Haagen Dazs

•The Energy of India - Indian Oil Corporation

•We fuel amazing - Cairn

•Be more everyday – Marico Limited

•Building a better working world – Ernst & Young

Funda please…

The Penrose triangle, an impossible object that was devised and

popularized by the mathematician Roger Penrose

The NatWest logo was partly inspired from this structure

This index was first proposed in the late 1990s by

an analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Bank. It stated that

the construction of the world's tallest building is

usually completed right before an economic

downturn. The Empire State Building was built early

in the great depression and the World Trade Center

in the US was completed on the eve of a recession.

Name it.

The Skyscraper Index

When X marketed in Mexico, the advertisements were

supposed to say: “It won’t leak in your pocket and

embarrass you”

However, the company mistakenly thought the Spanish

word “embarazar” meant embarrass

Rather than the meaning they intended to convey, the

advertisements actually read “It won’t leak in your

pocket and make you pregnant”

This poster created by Francis

Tipton Hunter during the Great

Depression features a little girl

watching over a litter of kittens with

the aid of a flashlight.

It proved so popular that

reproductions suitable for framing

were offered to readers who

responded by sending in 70,000

dimes. This created history and a

brand’s logo, which is still in use

today.

Name the brand!!

Eveready

What was the purported reason for

Mark Zuckerberg to marry just 1 day after the

Facebook IPO?

Because California divorce laws say that any

wealth acquired before marriage cannot be shared

Jan 9, 2007 : A Starbucks outlet

somewhere in San Francisco

‘Good morning,’ answered the

polite voice of employee Ying

Hang ‘Hannah’ Zhang . ‘How may

I help you?’” “‘Yes, I’d like to order

4,000 lattes to go, please,’ X said,

grinning. ‘No, just kidding. Wrong

number. Goodbye!’”

Ever since, this outlet continues to

receive prank calls placing orders

for 4,000 lattes from the members

of this ‘fan group’

1st ever outgoing call from an iPhone – made by

Steve Jobs during the launch of the iPhone

All have been named creative directors of

companies:

•Justin Timberlake – Budlight

•Will.i.am – Intel and Coke

•Alicia Keys – Blackberry

•Lady Gaga - Polaroid

From a business angle, Telefónica Europe (the

telecom company that uses the brand name "O2"), the

British retailing group Sports Direct, and Ricoh (the

Japanese electronics company) had suffered a loss of

a certain kind for the duration of London 2012

Olympics.

But it was restored once the Games ended.

What loss and why?

aka…

Three of the venues for the Olympics had sold their

naming rights to these three companies:

The O2 Arena, the Sports Direct Arena and The Ricoh Arena

But the sponsorship deals that the 2012 Olympics have

struck mean that other companies cannot have their names

associated with the Games. So for the duration of the Games,

these venues were known plainly as (respectively):

North Greenwich Arena, St James' Park and

City of Coventry Stadium.

• “Home Taping Is Killing Music” was the

slogan of a 1980s anti-copyright

infringement campaign by the British

Phonographic Industry (BPI)

• With the rise in cassette recorder popularity,

the BPI feared that people being able to

record music from the radio onto cassettes

would cause a decline in record sales.

•However, its logo has been more famous being

incorporated in another logo.

X was launched in February 2010. The company

was founded by Y, a Wharton graduate and Z,

alumnus of IIT Delhi. X adopted a remote village

(Shivnagar, UP) in India and enabled clean drinking

water facilities by installing manual pumps.

To show their gratitude, the village’s residents

decided to rename their village to X Nagar

Id X, Y and Z

X – Snapdeal.com

Y – Kunal Bahl

Z – Rohit Bansal

When the "national bird" of India was under

consideration, ‘X’ was a proposed candidate strongly

supported by the Indian ornithologist, Salim Ali, but

dropped in favour of the Indian Peafowl for a very

strong reason.

Name the bird and the reason.

The Great Indian ‘Bustard’, since there were

high chances of it being mis-spelled

Who was former French President Francois Mitterandspeaking of when he said:

“She had the eyes of Caligula* and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe”

*Caligula: a notoriously cruel Roman Emperor

+

Margaret Thatcher

Dan Leydon is an illustrator well-known for his sports visuals

What famous footballing strategy does the last block represent?

The Dutch “Total Football” (note the Orange colour of the block)

Id