After postponements of almost 2 months, Hero MotoCorp’s HR team was finally able to organize Megamind 2012 at its establishments across North India. With a series of quizzes being spread across quarters to recognize and reward talent in one complex gruelling competition, the Level 1 of Megamind 2012 started with the Dharuhera plant, located 70 kms from Delhi on NH-8. The enormous Dharuhera plant produces over 8000 bikes daily. You read that right, everyday! That is approximately 240,000 bikes a month or 93,440,000 bikes since India last won a Hockey Olympic Gold (For the uninitiated, it was Moscow, 1980). A little digression; but after a sumptuous meal in the dining hall we finally got underway with some quizzing action in one of the training halls. With all teams falling prey to a few of my rather tricky questions, the geographically diverse Dharuhera participants threw in a lot of surprises. Ironically, the team scoring the highest in the prelims ended last on stage and vice-versa, the team that just scraped the prelims on a tie-breaker to make it to the stage finished victorious with a comfortable margin of about 20 points. Moreover, their victory got sweeter when they nailed a 16-er by identifying the Rolls Royce cars at the fag-end of the quiz and crossed the half century mark in the process [The only team across plants to reach that figure]. The quiz was full of unassuming humour thrown in by the teams. Sample this; How do we commemorate the day Mahatma Gandhi returned to India from South Africa? Ans: Father’s day. My prediction for the 4 teams that have qualified from Dharuhera: The winning team is a title contender while the other three would need a special performance with luck being a major contributor to sail through to the subsequent legs. Next stop was quizzing the Sales & Marketing teams at the Head Office of Hero MotoCorp in Basant Lok, Delhi. The quiz was held in Jaypee Vasant Continental. Though the quantity of participation could have been a little more encouraging, the quality certainly made up for that. 
With an entertaining round of prelims, encompassing reluctant participants, for they refused to switch off their cell phones for the fear of missing expectant promotion calls; we had a rather strong bunch of six teams qualifying for the finals. The Head Office venture lived to my expectations of cracking the quiz left, right and centre. The thrilling finals went on to the last round with the leading team incorrectly guessing Henkel as a Swedish company, thus gifting the top spot to their neighbouring team whose fine performance was eventually rewarded with gift vouchers from a retail brand. My prediction for the 4 qualifiers from Head Office, Delhi- An equally strong chance for all to make it to the subsequent legs of the quiz. Some questions from the quiz: 1. With the commissioning of the fifth unit of the Mundra power plant in March, which ‘powerhouse’ is now India’s largest Private thermal power producer? 2. In an open letter to which political personality did Omkar Goswami recite the poem Casabianca by Felicia Dorothea Hemans- ‘The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but he had fled The flame that lit the battle’s wreck Shone round him o’er the dead’ while asking him to ignore the post of the President and focus on fixing the nation? 3. What was launched last week by the company’s CEO with the following lines: It is a tool to ______ your passion; To __________ your ideas; To _________ your creativity; And to ______ your enjoyment. Fill in the blanks. 4. “______ ______ is the feeling that you get when your heart pounds with anticipation. It is an intense adrenalin rush that brings sheer joy and excitement. It’s a feeling of heart thumping exhilaration that X delivers to its customers.” Fill in the blanks. 
5. While announcing his decision to step down after 13 years as a chairman of this company, this is what Jorma Ollila had to say: ‘Every board chairman would like to be able to leave his successors a flourishing company. I would have hoped to do that’ Which company did Jorma Ollila exit? Review for the other two quizzes coming soon! 