Answers to Strategist Quiz 155

 Here go the questions , and check the answers at the end :

1. Which company’s corporate philosophy and belief systems are associated with the Japanese word kyosei and the ‘three selves’ — self-motivation, self-management and self-awareness?
    
2. This company’s first board comprised Raunaq Singh (late founder of Apollo Tyres), MA Chidambaram of SPIC, Coke bottler Charanjit Singh and VR Mohan of Mohan Meakins. It was headed by a person who did an apprenticeship at Rolls-Royce for three years (1964-67). Name this person and the company he founded.
    
3. The CEO of which company plans to focus on the development of people in his organisation using the proven scientific principles of homeopathy and yoga?
    
4. This product was a failure and was referred to as a pizza box. The number plate of its founder’s silver-coloured BMW bore its name. Name it.
    
5. The CEO of this company took up a summer job in a poultry farm during his school days and applied the learnings to manage his company. He also set up a corporate communication channel called U&I to establish better connect with his employees. Name him.
    
6. Who founded a VC firm called The Hot Fudge?
    
7. Link Madonna, Demi Moore and Matthew McConaughey and a brand’s baseline, “Nuts for Life”. What do you get?
    
8. What is colloquially referred to as the Toulouse Goose?
    
9. This company was an offshoot of an initiative of a chemistry teacher, TK Gajjar, and his student Koti Bhaskar in the early 1900s. It started as a laboratory and was funded by the business family that currently owns it. Name it.
    
10. Identify this luxury brand from its logo. It has set up shop in India. 

Answers :

1. Canon
2 Maruti Udyog
3 Rajiv Bajaj
4
5 Shiv Nadar of HCL
6 PIERRE FERRARI
7 Vita Coco
8 Excessive fatness or obesity of the public
9 Alembic Chemical Works
10. Burberry

Answers to Strategist Quiz 151

I'm back with answers to the latest quiz offering of Strategist, a Business Standard supplement. As always, please fill in the unsolved ones with comments below!

1. This brand’s baseline and rewards programme is called ‘Enjoy the Ride’. It has launched a denim version of one of its products; what is it being popularly called?
    
2. Fill in the blanks and identify the automobile companies that use these technologies, ____motion and _____ Efficiency.
    
3. Connect these and identify the inventor: Indian born, ideated in the bath tub, chocolate bars, radioactive substance and his wife’s ability to remember only four digits.
    
4. A hairdresser received a patent in 1995 for his invention that is made out of hair and pantyhose/ stockings. What is it called and used for? 
5. During the 1990s, this brand’s image in the US hit a low when Jay Leno, the host of The Tonight Show, compared this brand with Yugos, the communist era rattletraps (cars) imported from Yugoslavia. Today it is an extremely successful brand. Name it.
    
6. Who recently compared mobile technologies to ration shop rice and basmati rice?
    
7. This businessman introduced in India foreign trees and plants which he personally cultivated in his estates in Ooty and Bangalore. He visited Japan in the 1890s and invited the Japanese to experiment in sericulture in Mysore which helped revive the silk industry then. Name him.
    
8. With what was the E in 7E7 replaced and why?
    
9. Which luxury goods store hired a live Egyptian cobra to guard a pair of haute couture sandals encrusted with ruby, sapphire and diamonds that was designed by an Italian fashion designer?
    
10. This organisation is identified by the illustration below and was one of the few that were not affected by the financial meltdown of 2008.
    

 ANSWERS:

1. Nissan
2.   
3.  John Shepherd Barron, ATM inventor
4. Hair Booms; used for fighting Oil spills
5. Hyundai
6.  
7.  JN Tata
8. 787, the Dream Liner. Contrary to popular belief that E represented Efficiency, it meant Eight
9.  Harrods
10. 
    

Answers to Strategist Quiz 150

I didn't manage to find all the answers last week, but I'm in constant trial with this week's quiz. Here they go:

1. Connect a typewriter with an innerwear brand and what do you get?
    
2. In the context of the recent European financial crisis, what does PIGS stand for?
    
3. Name the Indian company and the designation it has given to a senior level executive who decodes sacred stories, myths, rituals and their relevance to modern times, and helps the company build its cultural strategy.
    
4. Who propounded the strategy of innovating in emerging markets and then marketing these innovations in developed markets as alternative ideas and what name did he give it?
    
5. This brand’s failure (late 1980s) is also linked to the word “fresh” which was added to its existing name. The FDA in the US termed the usage as a misnomer and called it false advertising. The brand gradually wound down and efforts to find a buyer proved to be unsuccessful. Name the brand and the multinational who owned it.
    
6. Name the foreign company in India whose expat employees are taking up Indian names to be more culturally acceptable to colleagues, business associates and clients.
    
7. If you are having a mudslide what would you be drinking?
    
8. This family came to prominence when it was commissioned to build carriages for the Royal Mail in 1760. By the late 19th century, it was hand-crafting the coachwork for the new “horseless carriage”. And today, this family’s name still resonates with the bespoke luxury of the world’s finest carriages and cars. Name the family and the cars it is associated with.
    
9. Which brand is associated with Nudes, Pinks, Reds and Browns?
    
10. Connect both the logos and give reason for their being in the news recently. 

Answers

1. 

2. Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain

3. Pantaloons/Future Group. Devdutt is the Chief Spiritual Officer

4. Trickle Up Innovation, Paul Krugman

5.

6. Huawei

7. Vodka

8. HJ Mulliner . Now associated with Bentley

9. Lakme

10.

Would the housing build up in India's capital Delhi sustain?

I'm afraid not.

If you live in Delhi and read Times of India or Hindustan Times, you cannot miss the huge one-page advertisements for property units: apartments, golf course plots and luxury condominiums. The advertisements usually line the front and back pages, and show an architect or better, an artist's impression of the buildings to come up.

Several developers are selling affordable houses in integrated townships like Kundli, Sonepat, Gurgoan, Faridabad and Noida, while others are focussing on the high-end condominiums in the heart of the city and Noida.

1. High end condominiums start at Rs. 1.5 crore onwards and are going to be bought by people who already own a house. If they propose to move into their condominium after allotment ( I'm guessing a few years from now) they would sell their present house. This gives us a problem of today's demand of condominiums and the eventual demand for the buyer's homes in the futures.

2. Affordable houses are not so affordable that the average buyer will give a whole cash down for the entire amount. In fact such buyers are in a large minority. Most of the buyers will be young, first time buyers and will be taking 10-20 year loans for buying the apartments. Their repayment of principal and interest in turn, depends on their incremental salary, which depends on the economy as a whole.  

What if the default?
A similar situation prevailed in the US, but in that scenario, the majority of the owners were sub-prime borrowers, who had adjustable rate mortgages. After US house prices peaked, and started their downward movement, mortgage defaults started. Refinancing became tough, and mortgage backed securities lost most of their value.

The Indian borrowers are not sub-prime, but even them satisfying their repayment obligation isn't sure.

My above fears may be far fetched, but the immediate one is that of today's demand. Will Delhi and its surrounding population's financial capital soar up to buy one of the above property units? Will they shift? And what about the perennial problem of car parking, sealed shops, traffic, overcrowded buses and Metro in the metropolitan city?

Godrej buys out Sara Lee's stake to become 2nd largest household insecticide player in Asia

The 15 year Joint Venture between Godrej and Sara Lee comes to an end, with Godrej Consumer Products Ltd. (GCPL) buying out its partner's 51% stake for Rs. 1065 crore. Both companies benefit from a break-up at this scenario, US-based Sara Lee wishes to focus on its core food and beverage businesses while Godrej seeks to wholly own shoe polish Kiwi, mosquito repellent Hit and Good Knight which accounts for 1/4th of its net profit.

It seems Godrej had all of it planned since a few years, because GPCL last year bought two units of the Godrej group that together held a 49% stake in Godrej Sara Lee.

Adi Godrej, its Chairman is planning on more acquisitions and is looking ahead to build a war chest of Rs. 3000 crore to fund these mergers in the near future. With its recent Megasari acquisition, it is now the 2nd largest household insecticide player in Asia.

Answers to the Strategist Quiz 149

I've been attempting the Strategist Quiz of Business Standard each week since many months but can never find all the answers. So I thought instead of competing, I'll post my answers here, and hope to extract a few from you in the comments section. So here go the Questions and their respective answers at the bottom.

1. Whom will you find in conventions titled 140CC?
2. We know of black forest pastries, but who owns the Black Forest furniture brand?
3. Where are ‘credits’ and ‘pixels’ used as currency?
4. He is a Formula one racer and is now being called “Richard Branson of Asia”. Who is he?
5. Which book do you get to by linking 111 charity and playbook?
6. Which CEO has set up a practice of inviting only one senior leader out of the 200-odd leaders in his company to his house for the weekend which is dubbed as a sleepover?
7. What is common to Oracle, Symantec, Audi and Burger King?
8. Which Indian entrepreneur’s acumen of building an international brand without publicity is now a case study at Harvard Business School?
9. Where will you find Juicy, Chatkila, Bindas and Sting?
10. Identify the mascot, brand and its owner.

Answers .

1. 
   
2. 
   
3. Haboo, social networking site for teens
4. Vijay Mallya has a similar, but smaller brand value than that of Richard Branson, but I wonder if they meant formula one owner rather than racer
5. 
   
6. Jeffrey Immelt, of General Electric
   
7. Advertisements of these brands in the movie "Iron Man 2"
8. Shahnaz Hussain
9. Bingo's profile picks in their website
10. 
    

To keep receiving such quiz resource answers, please subscribe to our feed.

My Finance Times is back and roaring!

The Blog is back!
As many may have noticed, My Finance Times has been shifted from a Wordpress.com to Blogger.com. I'm thankful to have gotten back to the blog after a long hiatus!

Most of this time, I was preoccupied with everyday studies, but in the latter part, I've striven to increased my knowledge base, and continuously doing so even right now. I had started a Book on 'Options,Futures and Other Derivatives' by John Hull to get to know more about all the financial instruments which the bigwigs on Wall Street and everywhere else tweak to hedge, arbitrage and make handsome profits. The book is not for beginners, and I being a beginner have, thus, moved to McMillan on Options which has proved much easier to read and understand.

As GM Trevelyan has rightly said "Education has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading," I would request all of You to suggest reading material for me and other readers as I begin on a rather adventurous route to being a derivatives and options expert.

Just as a mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions (so Oliver Wendell said), I'd  embark on this journey of financial education with all gusto and keep posting educational and intriguing articles here.

Wish me luck!