Monday, September 1, 2014

Answers to last week's quiz (#371) Gaurav Sri Krishna | New Delhi September 1, 2014 Last Updated at 00:03 IST

  1. Connect Maria Sharapova with the Indonesian word for tiger and what do you arrive at?

    The Porsche Macan, a new model that was launched this year. Sharapova is Porsche's new brand ambassador and is being used to win female customers for the brand. Macan in Indonesian means Tiger.
     
  2. What are these: Mother Surge, Mother Big Shot, Mother V8 Powered, Mother Green Storm, and Mother Revive?

    Variants of Mother, an energy drink marketed in Australia and New Zealand by Coca-Cola.
     
  3. The CEO of this company asked his young recruits to adopt a name from the martial arts and chivalry fantasy novels authored by a person who founded a newspaper in Hong Kong in 1959, an OBE honouree and after whom Asteroid 10930 is named. Name the CEO, his company and the author.

    Jack Ma of Alibaba asks his young recruits to adopt a name from the martial arts novels authored by Louis Cha Leung yung, who has a pen name Jin Yong. His own company name is Feng Qingyang a kung fu guru from one of the novels. The idea behin is to create a band of brothers kind of identity.
     
  4. This sticky brown mixture used by Indian women to beautify their skin gets its name from the historic use of the material for cleaning or 'fulling' wool by textile workers called 'fullers'. Archaeologists in India have found a formula in a 16th century Moghul journal that combines this mud with soil, cereal, milk and lime to remove the corrosive effects of industrial pollution. Give its Indian name and also mention the monument that is being cleaned with it.

    Multani mitti or fullers earth is now being used to clean Taj Mahal and give its marble a nice sheen. It is also being exported to Italy to clean grimy monuments there.
     
  5. Who said: "Your mind is software, program it. Your body is a shell, change it. Death is a disease, cure it. Extinction is approaching, fight it"?

    Peter Thiel, co-founder, PayPal
     
  6. Where is the only Indian post office located outside India? Also mention under whose jurisdiction it falls.

    The Dakshina Gangotri post office set up in Antarctica on Jan 26th 1988 is technically the only Indian post office located outside the country. It is operated under the Goa postal Division.
     
  7. Fill in the blank and name the company that owns this registered baseline: "Alone we are delicious, together we are ____

    'Alone we are delicious and together we are YUM' is the line of YUM brands that owns KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.
     
  8. He was the first to formally draw the graphical representation of demand and supply. Name him.

    Economist Alfred Marshall
     
  9. Who has created biometric earbuds that can measure a user's heart rate and track other fitness data via a smartphone audio jack? The category this product falls under is being called the fitness wearables category.

    Intel and SMS audio, majority owned by rapper Curtis 50 cent Jackson.
     
  10. Name the company from its logo and also mention what the logo represents.

    BASF, the chemical company. The little square and the big square signify a lock and key representing the customer's need and the BASF solution.
There were 21 correct entries for quiz No. 371. Tanvi Kamat Bambolkar from Goa wins Rs 2,000. The winner is chosen on the basis of the first correct entry received.

The Strategist Quiz (#372) Gaurav Sri Krishna | New Delhi September 1, 2014 Last Updated at 00:04 IST

The Strategist Quiz (#372)

  1. Whose words are these: "And there was Jack Welch. I got him into India because GE was not known in India and Pakistan. I pressed upon him to come. Rajiv Gandhi, who was a high-tech guy, had admiration for Jack. India was a closed economy and I became GE's national adviser?"
     
  2. Connect actors Margot Kidder, who played the role of Lois Lane in the first Superman movie released in 1978 and Timothy Dalton, who acted in the 1989 Bond film Licence to Kill, to a strange commercial proposition.
     
  3. Which location has the world's only beach airport for scheduled flights? It was first licensed as a runway in 1936 and its flight schedule is drawn up to accommodate high tide, which submerges three of its runways.
     
  4. During the Depression era of the late 1920s and early 1930s movie theatres in the US introduced a box office stimulant called Bank Nights. What was it?
     
  5. This word now being used as internet slang meant an ugly dwarf or a giant in old English and originated from a Norse word. It is also used to describe a fishing technique. Name it.
     
  6. Name the brand, which was created in 1997 to bring back to life the legendary nameless travel companion that was used by artists and thinkers over the past two centuries, among them Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, and Bruce Chatwin.
     
  7. This idea first surfaced in the work of US leadership theorist Warren G Bennis. It later received a boost through Alvin Toffler and then from Henry Mintzberg, who published a book in 1979 on the structuring of organisations. What was the concept?
     
  8. Which global beverage brand has historic links with Hannibal and Julius Ceaser?
     
  9. Which company formed recently in India uses this sanskrit phrase "Atithi Devo Bhava" as its official slogan?
     
  10. Whose logo is this?
One lucky winner will receive a cheque for Rs 2,000. Send your entries to strategist@bsmail.in. All entries must carry the postal address of the contestant. Last date for receiving entries: September 2, till 8 pm. Previous winners and employees of Business Standard and their families are not eligible to participate.

Monday, January 28, 2013

The Strategist Quiz (#290) Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi Jan 28, 2013, 00:23 IST


  1. This word, also used in business journalism, refers to anything that is huge, astronomical, bumper and colossus. It originated from an imaginary land of giants in Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. Name it.
     
  2. This business group originated in 1955 by the establishment of a sugar mill in Maharashtra. After losing the mill to cooperatives, it started manufacturing light dimmers and electronic gadgets. In early 1980s, its founder took a bank loan and launched an ambitious programme for producing colour TVs in collaboration with Toshiba of Japan and went on to be known as pioneers of colour TVs in India. Name the founder and business group.
     
  3. Name the business book, which is in the form of a parable and has characters with the names Deirdre, Bull, Mav, Einstein, Rambo, Maisie, and Andrea.
     
  4. With which industry is the Will Eisner Industry Awards connected?
     
  5. Which company launched a Tulsi-based family soap called Ralak in the late 80s?
     
  6. Why is a company founded in 1895 by Genzo Shimadzu being investigated by Japan’s transport ministry?
     
  7. Which brand innovated Planar, Protar, Tessar, Sonnar and Distagon?
     
  8. What is the term used to describe the use of an exploit to remove manufacturer or carrier restrictions from a device, such as cellphone or tablet? The exploit usually involves running a privilege escalation attack on a user’s device to replace the manufacturer’s factory-installed operating system with a custom kernel.
     
  9. ______are Crazy GoodTM. Fill in the blank with the brand name.
     
  10. Identify the famous brand from its logo?

Answers to last week`s quiz (#289)


  1. When IBM and Ford announced casual work days, allowing employees to wear business casual attire, which brand ran congratulatory ads in the Wall Street Journal and USA today? This brand credits itself of inventing the concept of casual wear. Hush Puppies  
  2. Connect the Octopus, the Murex Snail, Cow’s urine, the Lac insect and Red Onions with the fashion industry. What do you get? 
    They are all sources of natural dyes used in the fashion industry. Cow’s urine produces the indian yellow colour, Octopus– Sepia brown, Lac-red/violet, Murex snail – purple and red onions the onion red colour  
  3. This NYSE listed company was founded in the early 60’s. Its founder invited friends into her Queens home once a week, to discuss how best to lose weight. Name the founder and the company. 
    Weight Watchers International Inc was founded in 1963 by a Brooklyn home maker Jean Nidetch.  
  4. Name the company that was forced to hire an outsider as its CEO for the first time since its inception in 1847. It was reeling under a global bribery scandal. 
    Siemens. It hired Peter Loscher in 2007 who was President of Merck US at that time. Until 1999 German companies could deduct bribes paid abroad from their taxable incomes.
     
  5. This person, while head the marketing team of a technology company in 1991, came up with a revolutionary slogan after a failed promotion. He and his team studied successful consumer marketing techniques and tactics used by well-known companies supplying a ingredient of a finished product, like NutraSweet™, Teflon™ and Dolby™. Name the person, company and the slogan.. 
    Dennis Carter and this team at Intel came up with the slogan “Intel Inside”
     
  6. Name the brand that has launched a point system by introducing a proprietary unit of measurement for tracking activity and movement of the customer. It is recorded by the means of a wrist band. Also name the program. 
    Nike’s FuelBand. It is a three-axis accelerometer worn on the wrist, translating the wearer's daily movements into proprietary NikeFuel points to track the individual's activity and energy expenditures  
  7. This brand is known as Sure in the UK, Degree in the USA and Shield in South Africa. By what name is it sold in India? 
    Rexona
     
  8. What is the term used to describe a marketing strategy in which a firm marketing a product with a well-developed proposition uses the same brand name in a different product category? 
    Brand extension or brand stretching
     
  9. Whose new tagline or slogan is “Let’s go Places”? 
    Toyota Motors
     
  10. Whose logo is this? (Note: The cut visible at the bottom is intentional. The outer border of the logo actually is a full circle and is of the same colour as in this image) 
    Hyderabad Metro Rail. L& T Metro rail, which is the concessionaire, unveiled this new logo and announced that the project’s brand ambassadors would be chosen from students and citizens of Hyderabad through a multi-stage competition

Sunday, December 16, 2012

The Strategist Quiz (#284) Gaurav Sri Krishna / New Delhi Dec 17, 2012


  1. The company that was established in the 1890s made Cigars and Cigarettes out of chocolate as an alternative to the tobacco variety. During the Second World War, the company’s machine shop even turned out parts for US Navy’s antiaircraft guns. Name the company.
     
  2. What is the sobriquet given to start-up tech companies like NationalField and Amicus and why?
     
  3. This person moved from company to company by cutting jobs and boosting profits. He believed that the primary goal of any business should be to make money for its shareholders. By firing thousands of employees at once and closing plants and factories, he earned nicknames such as Chainsaw Al and Rambo in pinstripes. Name him
     
  4. Which company is linked to the Muppetgate blunder and why?
     
  5. An actress, who started her career in 1966 as a child actor in the Telugu movie, is going to endorse a brand, which was introduced in the 1930s and was named after its owner family’s favourite horse. Name the actress and the brand?
     
  6. What travel accessory is named after a person who served as the Chancellor of Exchequer and as the Prime Minister of Britain, both at different times?
     
  7. Name the organisation, which is pushing for the development of a wireless medical device similar to the one used by Dr McCoy in the Star trek series for instant medical diagnosis. The organisation along with a maker of wireless communication technologies as its sponsor announced a prize $10 million. Also name the device.
     
  8. Whose baseline reads “Bringing our best to you”? 
     
  9. Who said this, “People ask me all the time, don’t you feel guilty for it? And I say that‘s ridiculous. It seems reasonable and rational to control the ____from where you normally sit and watch ____”?
     
  10. Identify the brands they represent



Answers to last week's quiz (#283)


  1. he name for this start-up brand was taken from a character in the song-poem composed by Roscoe Mitchell, an African American composer and Jazz instrumentalist. It was founded by 3 musicians from California, who sold freshly squeezed juice from the back of an old Volkswagen van. It was NASDAQ Company till it was bought by a global MNC. Name the founders, the brand and its current owner.
    Odewalla, a juice brand now owned by Coca Cola. It was set up in 1980 by musicians Greg Steltenpohl, Gerry Percy and Bonnie Bassett, after they took the idea from a business guidebook in Santa Cruz, California.
  2. Connect the word TYPE with these typeface designs - Helvetica, ITC Franklin Gothic, ITC Avant Garde, Optima, Times New Roman and what do you arrive at?
    Monotype Imaging Holdings, a Delaware corporation based in Woburn, Massachusetts. It is the owner of all these typefaces and is listed on the NASDAQ with the ticker symbol TYPE.
     
  3. Name the rogue trader and the investment bank he worked for, who accessed a secret account in his firm nicknamed the Umbrella, to hide losses.
    The Ghanaian born and British educated Kweku Adoboli who worked for UBS and was convicted recently.
     
  4. Which company is now presenting its corporate website as a digital magazine and has given it a name after an internal publication it ran for its employees from 1987 to 1997?
    The Coca Cola Company’s website is now presented as a digital magazine instead of a portal and is called Coca Cola Journey
     
  5. This writing instruments brand is believed have been named after characters from a popular vaudeville comedy double act which appeared at a Music Hall in London during the early 1900s. It was the first modern day pen maker to reintroduce the use of casein as a material for making pens. Casein made from milk protein particles are dyed and then laid down under high pressure to form slabs from which the components are eventually formed. Name the brand and its founders.
    Conway Stewart which was founded by in 1905, Mr. Frank Jarvis and Mr. Thomas Garner. Its Winston Churchill edition pen comes with a book of Churchill quotes, a Churchill cigar and a bottle of Conway Stewart ink.  
  6. Name the brand campaign that was made to bring the tea brands Agni, Gemini and Kanan Devan under its parent brand.
    Tata Tea’s Jaago Re (wake up) campaign which is now being termed as a social catalyst.
     
  7. What does this acronym MOOCS stand for?
    Massive Open Online Courses. Related to the online education business.
     
  8. In an article on innovation for the New Yorker last year, whom did Malcolm Gladwell refer to as the ‘Fox and the Henhouse’?
    Steve Jobs was the fox and Xerox PARC was the henhouse.
     
  9. During the 1880s, which alcoholic beverage brand in England got shippers to use their barrels of beverage as ballasts on ships, travelling to and from Australia, guaranteeing its product many months of additional maturation in oak, without the need to find expensive storage space? 
    In 1887, Teacher's Highland cream whisky created a new brand called Australian Bonded Whisky using their barrels of Whisky as ballasts on ships travelling to and from Australia guaranteeing the whisky many months of additional maturation in oak, without the need to find expensive storage space. Innovative indeed.  
  10. Identify the companies from their respective logos. Both are not connected to each other but are in businesses related to agriculture. It surely has a connection with slow left arm spin bowlers.
    1.Agriterra is the largest agri-operators and leading food providers in Africa. Its founder CEO is Phil Edmonds, a slow left arm spin bowler who played for England. 2. The second company is Organic Haus, an all-organic brand that sells products sourced mainly from German, Austrian and Europe. It was founded by slow left arm orthodox spinner Dilip Doshi who was one of the only two Test bowlers that played in their first tests after the age of thirty and yet went on to take 100 wickets.



Sunday, November 18, 2012

The Strategist Quiz (#280) Gaurav Sri Krishna / Nov 19, 2012, 00:41 IST


  1. This brand is commemorating the 50th anniversary of the formation of the rock band Rolling Stones by releasing a special edition of its product. The packaging is a crystal bottle that features the iconic lips and tongue logo cut in relief on the front of the bottle with a diamond-shaped decorative stopper. The bottle comes in a stylish box modelled after a black sofa. It also links the launches of its products with the milestones of the band starting from the 60s. Name it
     
  2. What is common between the Hong Kong Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and Reserve Bank of India buildings in Mumbai and the richest man in Ireland of the year 2011?
     
  3. In the US it is the tag, in the UK it is either end or strap and in Japan it is the catch. What are these?
     
  4. This product gets its name from the Greek word for “mound or hill”. Its original was version was supposed to have been mound shaped and not flat as it is now. Name it.
     
  5. Which brand has an edition which reads “The 44th President of the United States Barack H Obama Commemorative Edition? It is a brand Obama is seen wearing most times and it gained mileage after Obama’s re-election recently.
     
  6. What is egosurfing?
     
  7. This renowned contributor and guru to the world of management was born in Rumania. He was a math whiz at age of 11 and did book keeping for an icehouse to help support his family. His father becoming a bootlegger in 1919 to help fund his education at University of Minnesota. After World War II, he realised that he could go no further within a corporate structure and therefore struck out on his own. Name him.
     
  8. Name the company that runs its official blog called Snack Chat?
     
  9. Which company’s base line is Always Learning?
     
  10. Identify the brand from its logo.