In the right place at the right time

 On   an October in  1954, 12 year old Cassius clay and one of his friend rode their bicycles to th Columbia
auditorium, for its annual  convention. The boys parked their bicycles and went around the bazaar for few  hours and decided to head back  home. But when they walked back to where they'd left their bikes, the new Schwinn bike of Cassius clay was gone.

Cassius  was in tears and went to a police officer standing near the basement of the building, where there was a boxing gym, the Columbia gym. Cassius was furious and demanded a statewide manhunt for his bike and threatened the beat hell out of the kid who had stolen it,

The police officer, named Joe Martin after listening to Cassius's oaths of revenge, said, "well do you know how to fight?"

Cassius said no, but I'd fight anyway. Martin said that perhaps the best thing to do would be to come around to the gym and learn how to fight before making any nasty challenges

Soon  Cassius   started coming to the gym on South florida street and learned the rudiments of boxing.
and  went on to became a legendary boxer
.
Which boxer am I talking about? Answer in Comments

Tata Crucible India finals 2010

Savoir Faire (Goa) won the  National Final of Tata Crucible Business Quiz- 2010. The goans forced a tie breaker by cracking the final question of the quiz and defeated a consistent chennai team (Gopal Rao and Shankar)


The other finalists who fought for the honors are - Madras Metallurgical (chennai), Riurkela Steel (Ranchi), HLL Mumbai), XIMB (bhubneshwar), NTPC (Delhi) and Chennai Silks (coimbatore).

Questions from Tata Crucible finals: (Answers in italics)

Round 1:

These were originally produced from randomized version, the first non computer version was manufactured by scientific games ..scratch cards

THe product was developed by Jhon Issac Hawkins. He  received a US patent for his device in 1803 and in 1804, Thomas Jefferson began using the device extensively. Which product am I describing? - Auto Pens

Beleved to be the oldest surviving in that industry, the logo was based on memories of his childhood in Utah... Paramount Pictures

The crown plaza hotel in Copenhagen  offered $36 to its guests who can cycle for 15 minutes. Why are they doing it. To generate power for the hotel

 The phrase was originally coined by John Seybold and was popularized by xerox....WISIWG

Maldives is the first country to start a diplomacy island where they can virtually call ...SecondLife

Ruth Belville born in 19th century has a unique business model. What was that business model that give here a unique nickname - Greenwich Time LAdy. She used to set times in watches according to GMT

Round 2 - Visuals:

Let not the 'press' of men
Disturb a museum piece
When life's extinct, oh then
The pie shall lie in pea

In what context did C.D. Deshmukh wrote that poem - When copper was withdrawn in printing currency

 Why Fight Nature? Said this lady - Ida Rosenthal

Showed the logo of Formica logo

This is a book called 'tactile mind' by Lisa Murphy. What breaking ground did this break into - It is the first pornography magazine

What does this company manufacture - Ahiida manufacture sportswear for muslim women BURQINI

A image on how the term 'Curb side Trading' originated

What in the world are Lotus Shoes - refers to a pair of tiny shoes worn by women with bound feet in Chinese culture.

Who own 'Afras academy for  business communication ' - Shashi Tharoor

ROund 3 - Tata's

In one of the amazing moment I ever saw in a quiz, Rourkela team cracked the four questions in Tata round on buzzer in less than 3 seconds.

Which Tata company acquired HRI - TRF

Saftey mascot of tata steel - Jeevan

Grow More pulses knowledge exchange is owned by - Tata Chemicals 

Round four -  Connectors

Images based on heritage suits in Taj Mahal hotel

A connector on Mahindra Satyam using Deepak Parekh of HDFC, Damadoran Pictures and Waka Waka song

Showed images of Talking Straight book and IMages of Jerry yang, Sam Pitroda and Arnolad - All these guys draw 1 rs/$ salary

 Round five:

It was one of the seven organisation that helped to form USO during world war two and was founded on June 6, 1844  in London - YMCA

The operations of this company are based in Ville Parle, Bombay. It was incorporated on October 15, 1985 as the  Helicopter Corporation of India (HCL)..Pawan Hans

With one question to go, three teams had a chance to win the national finals. Goa are the underdogs at 30, Ranchi who cracked 4 questions in tata round are at 40 and Chennai at 45.  

Last question of the quiz:

The production base is at Dholka (Dist . Ahmedabad) in a impressive spread of 14 acre..and bang came the answer from Goa- wagh bakri

Tie Breaker:

Which bank changed its positioning from 'seen beyond money' to 'live solid, bank solid' - Sun Trust Bank

What does a 'Notaphilist' collect - Bank Notes

On Jan 1, 2011 where will you find worlds largest ferrari logo - Ferrari World, Abu Dhabhi

What iconic brand in fashion came from Arthur Turner - Vogue

The deadlock was finally broken by Goa who cracked this question - Steve Joba and Wozniack decided not to open Apple on either of birthdays and decided to open on which date - April 1, All Fools Day

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 Tata Crucible Quiz Tata Track finals

Tata Crucible corporate quiz- India semi finals one 

Tata Crucible Quiz- India semi finals two

Tata Crucible Quiz- Tata Track finals

TCS Mumbai retained Tata Crucible internal championships by beating once again last years runners up m-junction. The other teams on stage include Tata Steel ( Jamshedpur), TCS (chennai), TIFR (pune), TCS Mumbai, Tata Elexsi (bangalore), MetalJunction (kolkatta), Tata Motors (lucknow), and TCS, Delhi.

Questions from Tata Crucible Internal track :(Answers in Italics)

Round 1 - cross words :


Its a latin root word for cleverness - Engineer

Treaty of nanking set up this up as business destination - Hong kong


After Durantoo train, mamta benarjee is launching Yuva train for youth

1851 submarine telegraph.....Reuters

Depak Jain will succed Frank Brown in Insead

What was started as customers afternoon letter  in 1882 - Dow Jones

California Fitness Premium Partners is ownded by - jackie Chain

Round 2 - Visuals

Digg.com logo

Some trivia about prince of perssia game creation

Artpiece of Agatha Criste

Pic of William Games, founder MAD magazine

Round 3 - Tata World

Pic of Carl Foster of Tata Motors 

Pic of John Mattaiah

Logo of Pierre hotel in New York

Pic of the morgen witzel  

Round 4 - equations

PDI cycle + his defination of quality = Edward Deming


Cpt Gopinath election symbol (kite) + Air Deccan new logo = Cpt Gopinath

Round 5 is again equations with a formula

Overall its a decent internal finals with some good answers from the team. Next up the big external track final questions

For Tata Crucible external track semi final one questions click here

For Tata Crucible external track semi final two questions click here

Tata Crucible Quiz- India semi finals

The second semi final of Tata Crucible was again a close affair. HLL  Mumbai answered the final question on buzzer and forced a tie breaker between Chennai and Cochin. The other teams on stage are Madras Metallurgical (chennai) , HSBC (Bangalore), Green Shield (Guwahati) , ITC (Ahmedabad) , HLL (Mumbai), NTPC (Delhi), Chennai Silks (coimbatore), Malayalam Manorama (cochin) and BMFC (lucknow)

Questions from tata crucible second semi finals: (Answers in Italics)

 Round 1:

He along with physicist Ernst Abbe lead to the discovery of the Abbe sine condition and started making microscopes - Carl Zeiss

THis is a term of two works used to purchase controlling intrests in a public traded company - Corporate Raider

What word comes from latin for self and mobility - Automobile

This city on the banks of rhine river is home ot Novartis, Roche and Bank of International Settlements - Basel 

Described the profile of  the don fabio capello in the movie godfather and asked to identify who he is

Only bank in the world which has ATM's only in Latin - Vatican Bank

A question on BPO which employs inmates of cherlapally jail in Hyderabad

A question on encryption process used by Julias Ceasar 

ROund 3 :

A picture describing Oracle using greek gods

Eastman kodak image
 
Intel founders image
Round 4:

Founded in 1772 they started making motorcycles in 1903 and merged with British Match corporation - Wilkinson Sword

Image of  the book - 'making India work' on fab India by william bissell
 
Chennai manged to crack one of the tie breaker questions and joined NTPC, HLL and chennai silks in the finals.

Click here for Tata Crucible Corporate Semi Finals - one 

Tata Crucible corporate quiz- India semi finals

XIMB ( bhubneshwar), Telegraph (Kolkata) , Rourkela Steel, Indian Armed Forces Medical College (Chandigarh) , XS Associates, Infosys (hyderabad), Bhilai Steel Plant (Nagpur) , Savoir Faire (Goa) and marico industries (Indore) battled out in first seminals at Tata Crucible India finals 2010. The semi finals was rarther a quick fire round of 20 questions and was closely contested.

Rourkela, Savoir Faire, XIMB  and crowds favorite Armed forces medical college progressed into the national finals
Below are some of the questions from the semis:

Round one on buzzer:

It was designed by two people, Artem Mikoyan and Mikhail Gurevich .. - MIG Series of fighter aircrafts

In the manufacturing of pencil, what is ferrulie - is a ring or cap that connects rubber and the pencil with a metal band

What is distaff race - horse racing, in which races limited to female horses

Miracles Happen: The Life and Timeless Principles of the Founder of Marry Kay Ash

Round two:

Black box in a flight is known as Red Egg

As a boy he is a keen scholar, he contributed in technology during cold war, however his most famous invention was a result of one of the discussions with his daughter.. which product am I describing? - Polaroid

At the time of his death, he was under intense pressure from Goldman Sachs ....Robert Maxwell

Which modern day company originates to textile company founded in 1929 - Berkshire Hathaway 


Round three: Visuals


Pic of  Leonard howarth nobel economics winner

Pascal lamy picture

Showed an image which represents Art on Rice field

Round four:

Charles and James started a company as whisky merchants and bonded ware housemen in Glasgow in 1882.An Indian company now owns this brand - white and mckay

This commercial artist is known for shoes, the economist described him in 2009 as "bellwether of the shoe market" - Andy Warhol

As expected, there was a tie breaker to decided the contestant for the fourth sport between Ranchi, Indore and Nagpur

TB Q1 - In 1997 I purchased 4000 mt of this, in may 2006 I announced I don't own this anymore, if this is silver, who am I - Waren Buffet


TB Q2 - In the abbreviation of  CNX, if N is NSE, what does C stand for - Crystal

TB Q3 - If De Bonon coined the word 'lateral thinking', who coined the word 'parallel thinking' - De bono

TB Q4 - What in the world of TQM is DIRFT - Do It Right First Time

And finally Ranchi cracked the fourth tie breaker question and grabbed the fourth spot.

Click here for Tata Crucible second semi final

Taj Mahal Trivia - 15 things I didn't know about Taj Mahal until last week

Been to Taj Mahal yesterday, to be very honest  I was more surprised by the vision of Shah Jahan than the building it self.

 Eleven mini tombs on front and 11 on back  represents the number of years it took to build Taj Mahal – 22

Another nice view, If you step forward and see Taj from the main gate you feel like Taj is going back when you step backward you feel Taj is closer to you

 moon represents Islam and the trishul represents Hinduism

 The most popular point in Taj complex to take photos is know as Diana Point because Princess Diana spent 2 hours there and gave poses to Media

22 steps in main entrance block again to represent the number of years it took to build taj

 

All chapters of Islam on Taj walls

 Artisitic expression to Mumtaz - The crown (Taz) and the yellow flowers (mum)

 Om symbols inside Taj and if you actually read it in other way it mean Allah in arabic

 Shah Jahan planned to build the second monument here. He spent 4 or 6 crore rupees in those days to build Taj Mahal

8 blocks of gardens on each side of Taj and 53 fountains represent the year of finishing Taj - 1653

View from Agra fort where Shah Jahan was imprisoned by his son Aurangzeb. He was worried of the financial implications of building one more monument and decided to arrest his dad. How did he did it? Simple, he cut down water supply to agra fort and shajahan surrendered in matter of days. Shah Jahan used to see Taj from his prison via Kohinoor Diamond !!

FIFA World Cup Trivia

Ball controversies have a long history, In the first world cup finals between Argentina and Uruguay there was a heated argument about which ball was to be used – the Uruguayan ball or the Argentinian ball. Finally the teams agreed to use the Argentinian ball in the first half and the Uruguayan ball in the second half. And ironically Argentina led 2-1 at half time and Uruguay won the game 4-2!

Uruguay was selected to host first world cup following their gold medals at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics and because the competition coincided with the South American country's centenary celebrations.

In every Italian title, their squad had a player who wasn´t born in Italy.
31% of all Portugal's world cup finals goals have been scored against North Korea.
Australia scored the most goals in any World Cup qualifier after beating American Samoa 31-0 in 2001.

Diego Maradona wears two Hublot watches one on his left hand for local time and the one on right hand for Argentina time

Cholima is the nickname of North Korean national football team. Its name roughly means "thousand-mile horse"

Gandhiji started two football clubs, in South Africa, both named "The Passive Resisters" after the writings of Thoreau n Leo Tolstoy

India qualified by default to the 1950 football world cup without playing the qualifiers

England did not participate in the first three tournaments. Infact when FIFA decided to start a world cup the English said, No, thanks as they thought such a tournament was beneath their dignity.

For more questions, join BizGyan facebook fan page

Brand Equity Quiz - 2010 Mumbai Regional Finals

BEQ saw one more close finish, this time between HUL and ParAmerica. ParAmerica cracked some really tough ones, but took a huge risk going for the final question. ParAmerica got a negative and HUL cracked an absolutely easy tiebreaker question.
70 odd teams participated in the prelims and following teams reached the regional finals:
Savoir Faire Media (Harshvardhan Bhatkuly & Rajiv D'Silva)
Sun (Mitesh & Amit)
Crisil (Sameer & Dhananjay)
IMRB (Sudhanshu & Amol)
PraAmerica 9puneet and Meghashyam)
HUL (Pradeep & Mohit)

First Round:

1. What should be served at exactly 6 degrees and poured in 120 seconds – Draught Guinness
2. The founder of dexter shoe company used for the first time the concept of – Factory Outlets
3. If you are shopping at Maniharon ka rasta, what are you buying- Jewelry
4. Who wrote the book- principles of Management – David Ogilvy
5. Young girls want Barbie to be - Anchorwomen
6. In 1896, what was cultivated for the first time by Raghu Bhosle – Nagpur Orange

Second Round:

7. In conouge, specialists say half of the product is lost because of the manufacturing process known as Deb Baktha. Which product am I referring to – Athar, Perfume
8. What does Budtender to – They study Marwana
9. Rose Friedman collaborated with her husband and wrote the book ‘ Free to chose’. Who is her famous husband – Milton Friedman
10. What is common to United Robotonic, Meid Advertising..etc etc – All Fictional companies in Television Shows.
11. Sanka was a brand which defined its category de café. How did it got that name – From Sans Café
12. What was replaced in the Nepalis currency note – King of Nepal was replaces
13. Which industry is the largest customer of Robotics industry – Automobile industry

Third Round:

14. Print ad of coke
15. Film poster of Das numberi
16. ILO logo
17. Identify the typeface – Baskerville
18. George Eastman Kodak picture
19. Time cover of Nizam of Hyderabad
20. Bigboss, Casio reals..are all types of Fenni
21. Opening lines of which book – “On a sticky August evening two days before her due date….” – The Namesake
22. The year is 1975, the client is Xerox, the publisher is esquare, the topic is traveling through America. What did Xerox did and backed off after a controversy – Advertorials
23. Why did steve jobs sold all his Apple stocks except one after disagreement with Jhon Sculley – to receive annual reports
24. What is dutch auction – action in which prices go down

Fourth Round:

25. A video clip from the movie maandi
26. Audio clip of Warrren Buffet speech
27. National Stock Exchange anthem
28. Up in the Air TVC

Fifth Round:

29. Which two Indians travel in business boeing jets- President and PM
30. USA Today has listed which advertising icon on top of a list of imaginary luminaries and most influential people who never lived – Marlboro man
31. Which country reduced its time zone to give a boost to its economy from 11 timezones to 9 timezones – Russia
32. Most expensive city after London, HongKong and Tokyo – Mumbai
33. How many languages appear on Indian currency note – 15

Tie Breaker

34. Which company would you associate with Unbutton campaign - Levis

The early days of facebook

Business Insider posted a series of articles on early days of facebook, to summarize

Three students(Winklevoss brothers and their friend Divya Narenda) at Harvard approached Mark Zuckerberg to develop a Harward University specific social networking site, Harvardconnection.com.

Mark agreed to develop it and after a couple of days he intentionally mislead the trio and started developing a website on similar lines, thefacebook.com

Thefacebook.com went live in 2004 and instantly became a super hit. The trio filled a law suit againt Mark and settled it out of court for cash and stocks reportedly worth about $65m in 2008 and launched their project, renamed ConnectU, in May 2004.

Check it Out

1. The company started by Toyoda's grandfather did indeed have his name -- Tokyo Toyoda Motor Sales -- until 1936, when a stroke of the brush changed it to Toyota.

Writing "Toyoda" in Japanese requires 10 brush strokes

While "8" is considered an auspicious number, "10" is not. "Ten" consists of two strokes crossed against each other and resembles the "plus" symbol, or even a crossroads or an uncertain path. Not a good omen for a company.The name Toyoda consists of two characters, one meaning fertile and the other, rice paddy.

Source story


2. Puckman was the name coined by young Toru Iwatani, a designer with Japanese video game developer Namcoc, for the central character of an offbeat game he came up with in 1980. Iwatani game involved a yellow blob racing through a maze.

After lackluster adoption in Japan, the game headed out to the USA in 1981 through licensore Midway Games. Pac man scores became the de facto "currency of competitiveness during the 80;s in schools

3. Tony Fernandes had no experience in airlines industry till 9 years ago. He used to run a music business when he was introduced to the wily Malaysian Prime minister Mahatir Muhammad in 2001. Muhammad persuaded Fernandes to buy out governments stake in the struggling Air Asia for just one ringgit. Today Air Asia is Asia's leading low cost operator