Conducted the business quiz for Quark 2009 (BITS Goa's Tech-fest). A preliminary round was held followed by 5 rounds - General Questioning, A Trail of Clues, They Ad-d Up, Buzzer and Long Visual Connect. A planned 6th round featuring a crossword grid was scrapped due to lack of time. Thanks to Prithviraj and Saravanan, the round on ads 'They Ad-d Up' turned out well. Nidheeshwar opined the same. Mahesh's team won. Ajay Parashuram and Sunil Thomas came second. As for the questions, I 'm working on how to post them. For now, I'm posting the 1st (general) round.
GENERAL
1. "The old American Dream . . . was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard . . . of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. This dream . . . became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill." - H W Brands, Historian.
What is being described in this analysis?
2. There was an attempt at unionizing the workforce of this service (started in 1880) by Mahadeo Havaji Bachche in 1930. According to a recent survey, there service involves only one mistake in 6,000,000, statistically equivalent to a Six Sigma (99.9999) rating. Whom are we talking about?
3. The AEX companies Philips, Ahold and KPN have the word ‘Koninklijke’ as the first word of their official corporate names. What does this term mean?
4. Founded by Reuben and Rose Mattus in New York in the late fifties, this brand-name has two made-up words made to sound Scandinavian to an American audience and "to convey an aura of the old-world traditions and craftsmanship". Actually they don't mean anything in any language. This is foremost among the examples of a concept called foreign branding. Name the brand.
(Note - Foreign branding is an advertising and marketing term describing the implied superiority of domestic products with a foreign or foreign-sounding name)
5. The Bell Telephone Company was founded by Alexander Graham Bell’s father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Hubbard also helped found a non-profit organization and was its first President. Name this organization.
6. The complete version of this famous tagline is ‘From the physical aspects of this word to metaphorical manifestations – X is Y and Y is X’. Name X.
7. According to the OED, this term was in use as early as 1986 and is defined as ‘An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector’. The term comes from the name of an American multi-national but refers to any low-status job where little training is required, staff turnover is high and workers’ activities are tightly regulated by managers. What term are we talking about?
8. Which company is generally considered to be the first MNC and the first company to issue stock?
9. From 2002 - 2008, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Thomson, LG Electronics, Sony, Hitachi, Sharp, and Samsung were on one side and NEC, Sanyo, Microsoft, Toshiba, RCA, Kenwood, Intel, Venturer Electronics and Memory-Tech Corporation on the other side. On February 19, 2008 one alliance emerged victorious. What is being described here?
10. What resulted from an argument during a 1951 shooting expedition in Ireland as to which was the fastest game bird in Europe between the Golden Plover and the Grouse?
11. This watch brand was founded in 1775 with the help of the dowry obtained the founder’s daughter’s marriage to a rich French personage. Marie Antoinette is supposed to have commissioned a watch with every existing (then) function built-in. It took 34 years to complete by which time the Queen had been guillotined. Name the brand.
12. The four founders of this company were Chimanlal Choksi, Champaklal Choksi, Suryakant Dani and Arvind Vakil. Arvind worked in Suryakant’s garage while the Choksi brothers were from the same profession. Initially, the company’s operations were based from this garage. Which company’s origins are we talking about?
13. Pakistan's major telecommunications and mobile phone company is Paktel. Who owns Paktel ?
14. If Nike was named after the Greek Goddess of victory, which brand is named after an Opera, whose name is the French version of the name of an Indian Goddess ?
Zed
