A blog to collect all quiz questions.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Assorted

Q1. Hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.
These lines compare the search for retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. Identify this company (a big hint there)

Baidu.
The name of Baidu is inspired by a poem constructed in the ci form by the poet Xin Qiji, written more than 800 years ago during the Song Dynasty. The poem compares the search for a retreating beauty amid chaotic glamour with the search for one's dream while confronted by life's many obstacles. Hundreds and thousands of times, for her I searched in chaos, suddenly, I turned by chance, to where the lights were waning, and there she stood.Baidu, literally meaning hundreds of times.

Q2. This was the first logo designed by the company’s founders in 1976. Not continuing with it for long they replaced it with the iconic logo that we know today. Name this maverick company.

Apple Logo. Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne designed the first logo. It depicts Sir Isaac Newton sitting under an Apple Tree. It was immediately replaced by the one designed by Rob Janoff (the rainbow coloured silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out of it)


Q3. The founder J Darius Bikoff began his personal quest for better water in the early 1990s when a New York city water scare lead him to scour local supermarkets for a healthier alternative to tap water and a more beneficial option than spring water. There were many waters out there, but none offered any more value than the rest. When Bikoff did his own research, he found a void in the bottled water industry
. He thus created ______________ brand. (think M&A)

Glaceau
A brand form Energy Brands Inc. The Tatas have picked a 30% stake (for $677 million) in this US based company. Their immensely successful line of products includes the vitaminwater, fruitwater and smartwater.


Q4. He worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software post his MBA and in 1995, he founded Yoyodyne a leading interactive direct marketing company, Yahoo! acquired Yoyodyne in late 1998. Last year he launched his new venture Squidoo. Identify this personality?

Seth Godin.
Godin graduated from Tufts University in 1982 with a degree in computer science and philosophy, he earned his MBA in marketing from Stanford Business School . From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software.In 1995, Godin founded one of the first online marketing companies, Yoyodyne. He sold the company to Yahoo! in 1998. As a part of the sale to Yahoo!, Godin became Vice-President of Permission Marketing at Yahoo!


Q5. The Mosaic symbol of this company is meant to convey the diversity and dynamism that define its group cos around the world. In its bright colors and unmistakable energy, the Mosaic symbol is meant to be a visual metaphor for the _______ family of companies. Which group is being referred to here?



Altria Group. 
It is the parent company of Kraft Foods, Philip Morris International, Philip Morris USA and Philip Morris Capital Corporation. It changed its name from Philip Morris Co to Altria in order to reflect its identity as a parent company for both the tobacco and food companies


Q6. In 1806 William founded this company which predominantly sold starch, soap, and candles he then partnered with Francis Smith and subsequently in 1812 purchased Smith's share of the company after which he offered a partnership to his brother Bowles. In 1820 they introduced their company's two major products Windsor soap andPearl starch. The entity as we know today was formed in 1928 after a merger with B.J.Johnson Soap Co. Identify the company.

Colgate and Palmolive. The B.J. Johnson Soap Co was renamed to Palmolive & Co due to their best selling soap. It took over Peet Brothers to form Palmolive Peet Co. In 1928 Palmolive Peet Co merged with Colgate


Q7. Identify whose print ad is this and it's purpose? (very workable)



Nike.
It is an ad for a fictional furniture brand depicts the soccer star Marco Materazzi as a durable armoire. Carlo Cavallone, a copywriter at Wieden & Kennedy in Amsterdam , the agency that created the campaign for Nike, says the ads were intended to rub it in a bit, but without being chauvinistic. Materazzi is shown in the shape of an armoire, as a stylized representation of a fictional furniture brand called Armadi Materazzi. Its slogan: Solidit mondiale testata a prova di testate (World-class solidity, proven to be head-butt-proof).

Q8. It was started in 1892 with the manufacturing of biscuits in a small house in central Kolkata. Later the business was acquired by the Gupta brothers and operated under the name of V.S.Brothers. In 1918 C.H. Holmes, an English businessman was taken as a partner and the company was launched with its present name. A well known Indian business family and Groupe Danone are stakeholders in it. Name the company.

Britannia Industries


Q9. This question was forwarded by a friend (Ashish Dikshit) and a further exploration lead me to a biz angle :-D.

What do the pictures / symbols signify? What's the business application of these pictures/symbols? (a toughie) 

These are Crop Circles (agriglyphs) (http://www.circlemakers.org/evolution.html). Crop Circles are areas of cereal or similar crops that have been systematically flattened to form various geometric patterns. The biz application part is Advertising. Circlemakers is one such company founded by John Lundberg (UK) which is into advertising through crop circles. Circlemakers.org has created numerous crop circles since the mid 1990s for movies, T Shows, music videos, adverts and PR Stunts. Clients to date have included Microsoft (X Box campaign), Nike, Shredded Wheat, AMD, Hello Kitty, Pepsi, Weetabix, BBC, The Sun, Mitsubishi, O2, Big Brother, National, NBC TV, Orange Mobile, History Channel and the Discovery Channel.




Q10. An easy one to end with, identify the companies with their NYSE ticker symbols

BOL - Bausch and Lomb

HDI - Harley Davidson (On Aug 15 2006 the ticker was changed to HOG)

FNM - Fannie Mae

MHP - McGraw Hill Publications

WHR - Whirlpool Corp

Q 1. In October 1899, John Barbey and a group of of investors launched the Reading Glove and the Mitten Manufacturing Company. Starting with a total investment of 11000 $, a 320 sqft factory was leased for 60$ a month. This became the predecessor to a world famous apparel company. Name it.

V F Corporation (Vanity Fair) - one of the world's largest apparel companies and a leader in jeanswear, intimate apparel, daybacks and workwear. The brands under VF include Lee, Wrangler, H.I.S, Bulwark, Jansport, Nautica, Vanity Fair and many more.



Q 2. Identify the logo - one of the biggest apparel makers in the world.



Mattel. Annually, more than 105 million yards of fabric go into making clothes for Barbie and her friends.


Q 3. Established by ______________ in 1928, the group started as an indenting house (importing and distributing foreign goods) and became a distributor of several popular consumer products with world-renowed brand names like Wood wards, Cadburys, Lever, Ovaltine, Pond's, Kelloggs, Brylcreem, Beecham, Waterman's, Shaeffers, Sunlight and many more. 

Name the group and its founder

TTK Group. It was founded in 1928 by TT Krishnamachari the ex-finance minister of India.


Q 4. Connect the two personalities with their company logo 

Hint: They were associated with Intel


  

Vinod Dham and Tushar Dave founded New Path Ventures LLC the first Indo-US venture capital fund that focuses on cross border investments to leverage India's cost effective talent and high growth emerging market.

Tushar Dave started his career at Intel as a Design Engineer in the advanced processor development group and played a key role in the design of 32-bit microprocessor.
Vinod Dham needs no introduction :-)



Q 5. Connect the visuals. 

Hint: A company that's specialising in solutions for the retail and the financial industry. 


   


NCR
The company began as the National Manufacturing Company (pic2 is its logo) of Dayton Ohio which was established to manufacture and sell the first mechanical cash register (pic3) invented in 1879 by James Ritty (pic4). In 1884 the company and the patents were bought by John Henry Patterson (pic1) and his brother Frank Jefferson Patterson and the firm was renamed the National Cash Register (NCR) Company.

Q1) Name this influential thinker, professor and a former Secretary of Labor US Government (Bill Clinton)



He is Robert B. Reich, Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written ten books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into 22 languages; the best-sellers The Future of Success and Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Reason. His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal. Robert Reich is co-founding editor of The American Prospect magazine. (that's the extension question 3 :) ). His weekly commentaries on public radio's "Marketplace" are heard by nearly five million people.

Q2) Connect this Knight Commander, Royal Victorian Order 1998 (Hint : Prince Charles's confidante) to the famous accountancy firm. (Please elaborate the connection)

 

Sir Michael Peat, he is the trusted member of the Clarence House and a private secretary to Charles, Prince of Wales since 2002. The connect here is that he is the great grand son of William Barclay Peat founder of the accountancy firm Peat Warwick which was later merged with other entities to form KPMG (Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler formed in 1987 with the merger of Peat Marwick International (PMI) and Klynveld Main Goerdeler (KMG), and their respective member firms). Sir Michael Peat also worked with KPMG from 1972 – 1993.


Q3) An extension of Q 1 here. What connects these three personalities?

  

Founders of the famous American Prospect Magazine viz Robert Reich, Robert Kuttner and Paul Starr respectively. This popular magazine was founded in 1990


Q 4) Connect a Before-After, the person on the right is at the helm of this telecom major after replacing the person on the left this June 2006?



Jorma Ollila and Olli Pekka Kallasvuo. Kallasvuo replaced Ollila this June as the President and CEO of NOKIA



Q 5) Connect the three pictures

PS: Courtesy Tata Crucible 2005, it's not the entire question one of the pics has not been included.


  


The Connect is Dollar Vests. First pic is the plant location of Bhawani Textiles Ltd makers of the popular Dollar Vests and Briefs. Salman Khan endorses their men's brand and Pokemon is their series of products for children (vests and briefs). 


1) The iconic $31-billion Scandanavin home products giant, has put on hold its plans to set up 25
showrooms across the country(India) for an investment of around $1 billion, due to India’s rules on FWI in retail say the foreign company can’t hold more than 51% stake and must have an Indian
partener. Name the company?
1) IKEA (Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd)
2) India’s second largest CDMA telecom company Tata Teleservices announced the launch of services
in GSM platform in partnership wih Japanese telecom service provider NTT DoCoMo. What will the service be branded as?
2) Tata-DoCoMo
3) He drew inspiration from his elder brother Rajaram, a former National Junior Champion, and was inducted into the sport by Earnet Lakhra. In his first internation meet, this 16-year old fly-weight boxer has won Bronze medal at World Junior Boxing Championship in Armenia, this year. Who is Indian boxer?
3) Namit Bahadur
4) This year English county side ‘X’ signed 20-year old Indian leg-spinner ‘Y’ on a short-term contract, interestingly ‘Y’ scored a century in his very first appearence for ‘X’. Identify ‘X’ and ‘Y’
4) X= Sussex, Y=Piyush Chawala
5) Identify the company from logo

5) Arcelor Mittal

1. The person in the picture below was awarded the Padma Shri & Padma Bhushan for his outstanding contribution to Unani system of medicine. The pharmaceutical house he was associated with today boasts of one of the largest Unani GMP certified and ISO 9001 facilities in the world at Manesar. Give the name of the company/pharmaceutical house.
1) Hamdard- the person is (was) Hakim Abdul Hameed

2. 1905 through 1987 : Grass
1988 until 2007: Rebound Ace
2008-present: Plexicushion Prestige.
What are we talking about?
2) Australian Open
3. The historical British meaning of "X" is a person who excels at debate. The title "X" was, in fact, given to a student obtaining first class in the Cambridge Mathematics Tripos I examination. The student obtaining the highest marks used to be described as the "senior X" These titles were officially abandoned by Cambridge University in 1909. What title? ( Clue : It is also a brand)
3) Wrangler
4.Bernard James Tindal played seven Test matches for England between 1903/04 and 1905. He was named as a Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1904. What is his most important contribution to cricket?
4) Googly
5. Connect these two gentlemen with the song “Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head”
5) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid
6. Tuvalu is an island in the Great Pacific situated Northeast of Australia. What is its claim to fame?
6) The ".tv" extension
7. You would have seen those cars belonging to foreign missions with blue number plates and the number written in white. These contain the letters "CD". What does CD stand for?
7) Consular Diplomats
8. Name the only Indian president who won unopposed. (to the post- obviously)
8) NS Reddy
9. Name the very famous nobel-laureate alumnus of Lady Sriram College, University of Delhi to whom this quote is attributed… "It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."
9) Aung san Suu Kyi
10. Identify the individual

10) Safdar Hashmi

1. Name the poet: ‘The Phoenix and the Turtle’, ‘Venus and Adonis’, ‘Sonnets’, and ‘The Rape of Lucrece’.
1) William Shakespearei
2. Created by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, The Alley Cats’ graduated from police academy and their first assignment was switchboard handling and traffic. It was their assignments with Mr. Charles Townsend that shot them to fame. How do we better know them?
2) Charlie's Angels
3. Which famous political-economic theory first appeared in Thomas Friedman’s, ‘The Lexus and the Olive Tree’?
3) Theory of Gloden arches
4. What is the Canadian one dollar coin colloquially called? Its 'pet-name' name comes from the name of a bird?
4) Loonie 
5. Middle name is Ramlal Nikhanj; author of book, ‘Straight from the Heart’; and member of the Indian Territorial Army; brand ambassador for Haier and Birla Sun Life Insurance; known for his achievements in sport. Who is he?
5. Kapil Dev
6. The emblem of which organization is inscribed with the term, 'Veritas'?
6) Harvard Business School
7. There many stories doing the rounds on how the band got its name. One says it’s a distorted version of the name of a book by Sinclair Lewis. The other one says that once when the drummer was sitting in his school with his girlfriend he went about doodling a name in his notebook and then was born a new name for the band. Which band?
7) Aerosmith 
8. Who recently launched a perfume brand, S2 (S-Square)?
8)Shilpa Shetty
9. Identify:

9) Jeffery Archer
10) If you have been in Gurgaon, you have probably crossed and gone around IFFCO Chowk a million times. What does IFFCO in IFFCO Chowk stand for?
10) Indian Farmer's Fertilizers Coopoerative
1) Identify

1) Vikram Sarabhai
2) ED of Godfrey Philips in India; Awarded the "Business Standard Award" for making XYZ the most innovative company in India for 2008.
Name the individual and identify XYZ.
2) Lalit Modi, BCCI
3) Sitter: These are the opening lines of a timeless classic. Identify the book.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. "
3) A Tale of Two Cities
4) Identify the film

4) To kill a mockingbird
5) What is Gunter Parche's claim to fame (he's rather infamous)?
5) The guy who stabbed Monica Seles in '93

1. Has cricket ever been part of the Olympics?

1. The only instance of cricket being part of the summer Olympics was in 1900 when Britain and France battled it out for top honours. Great Britain won the contest convincingly.

2. What is Machiavellianism?

2. Machiavellianism is a psychological concept, which is a strategy of social conduct that involves manipulating others for personal advantage, often to the detriment of the people being thus exploited.

3. What is Bangkok officially known as?

3. "Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit" is the full ceremonial name of Bangkok.  Interestingly, the word "Bangkok" features nowhere in this official name.

4. How did the term "fired" originate?

4. In days of yore, people used to get rid of unwanted folk without killing them by simply burning their houses down.

1. What is nicknamed as "The Great Lady of 43rd Street"? -

 New york Times

2. Duracell Battery is an arm of which company? - 

P&G - Gillete

3. Which car name translates as 'people's car? - 

Volkswagen

4. What name literally means 'prosperous rice field' in Japanese? - 

Akio Morito

5. How is these two guys Don n Frank related with reference to a special dish of Italy? - 

Pizza