SIBM Transcend 2009

Diwali greetings! Hope the festival of lights fills your lives with health, wealth & happiness.

Had conducted the business quiz 'BizArena' at SIBM 'Transcend 2009' in March along with SIBM alumnus Samrat Mukherjee. Here are a few questions from the prelims.

1. Percept Picture Company, Congress’ media campaigner for General Elections 2009, had bought the exclusive rights for what from Super Cassettes Industries for around Rs 1 crore, to use in Congress' election campaign?
2. Some belongings of Mahatma Gandhi that were in the possession of documentary film-maker James Otis grabbed headlines recently. The famous hotel baron Sant Singh Chatwal said he would bid for them. Ultimately it was Vijay Mallya who bought them. Which auction house carried out this auction?
3. Institute of Development in Automotive Engineering was where it was designed. The parent company has filed 34 patents for it. What are we describing?
4. Identify this person.

5. Which company’s waste management program and environment friendly initiative in India is called eKO?
6. Who trades on NYSE as 'COP'?
7. This brand recorded a retail value – i.e. what the end consumer paid on the street of $1.6 billion or Rs 8300 crores during 2008. These figures were reported by the company to New York-based Impact International, a leading industry digest, as part of its annual listing of the world’s top spirits brands and their marketers.
The reported retail value makes it probably the eighth biggest spirits brand globally.
Which brand? (specific answer)

Answers:
1. The rights to the song 'Jai Ho'
2. Antiquorum Auctioneers
3. Tata Nano
4. AS Murthy
5. Coca Cola
6. ConocoPhillips
7. McDowell's No. 1


Finals:
1. Minimally Invasive Education (or MIE) is a term used to describe how children learn in unsupervised environments. It was derived from an experiment done by Sugata Mitra while at NIIT in 1999 often called The Hole in the Wall (HiWEL).
Under this project, computers could be installed in backward areas. Young children taught themselves about the use of computers without intervention from the experimenters.
What was inspired by this and is huge news and has done huge business recently?


2. The Ministry of Finance has recently launched a nation-wide competition for the design of a symbol. The symbol should:
¡Represent the historical and cultural prominence of the country
¡Be widely acceptable across the country
¡Be applicable to standard keyboard
¡Be in the Indian National Language Script or a visual representation
The top 5 selections will receive Rs 25K each irrespective of getting selected as the final symbol. The jury of examiners would consist of seven members drawn from various organizations in the field of arts, finance, culture, history etc. Entries must reach the right people latest by 1300 hours on 15th April 2009.
What symbol are we talking about?
3. Ad for?

Answers:
1. Slumdog Millionaire

The movie Slumdog Millionaire is adapted from the book Q & A (novel). Vikas Swarup in various interviews has acknowledged HiWEL as the inspiration behind the book.The author has said that he was inspired by the Hole in the Wall project which installed a computer in a Delhi slum.

2. A new symbol for Indian Rupee instead of writing Rs. or Re.

3. Viagra

The quiz was jointly won by SIBM and SLS (Symbiosis Law School). The teams agreed to split the prizes among themselves.