1. This former scientist from BARC first disrupted diagnostic services in India by going for a large centralised lab in Mumbai. He sold controlling stake in this firm X to a startup Y in 2021. Now he is mentoring and invested in a dental services chain Z where he claims to disrupt by decentralising through creating thousands of local entrepreneurs. This entrepreneur is very popular in social media for his “Rajini’ style dialogues . Z is a play on his initials.
What are X, Y and Z ?

Ans. X – Thyrocare.

⁠Y – pharmeasy

⁠Z – AVMSmiles .. AVM comes from A.VeluMani

2. This Birla Enterprise started life as a Textile Mill in 1919 in Calcutta. From GD Birla this co came to BK Birla. He expanded the business by entering rayon in 1959, paper in 1961 and cement in 1964. Cement became the biggest business of this company till the 1980s. Major diversification was entering the tyre business in 1992. In 1999, the textile business was demerged. As B K Birla grew old, he inducted his daughter Manjushree Khaitan as the Vice Chairman. After BK Birla died in 2019, Manjushree Khaitan inherited this business. In 2024, cement business was merged with Ultratech Cement. The loss making tyre business was demerged as Birla Tyres .. Birla Tyres became sick and through NCLT went to Himadri Specialty Chemicals. Only thing that remained with this company was the rayon, paper and specialty chemicals business.
On 12th September 2026 this vintage Birla group co left the Birla group with Frontier Warehousing ,a Gautam Aggarwala led co taking control of Kolkata headquartered company.
Name the company.

Ans. Kesoram Industries

3. Which Birla group company’s stock was once considered the bellweather of the BSE in 1970s and 1980s ? How do we know the company today ?

Ans. Century Textiles .. Aditya Birla Real Estate Ltd

4. Name the other textile major in Mumbai whose owners had also promoted Century Textiles before Birlas bought from them. Even that storied company is valued only for its land bank in Mumbai though their textiles business is still tottering along.

Ans. Bomaby Dyeing.. of Wadias

5. Identify the male model and he is a descendant of which famous national figure ?

Ans. Ardhendu Bose..Nephew of Subhas Chandra Bose

6. Name this Bombay based textiles yarn company whose owner was crazy about cricket so he built a crack team in the 1970s with Gavaskar as the Captain and team members like Sandeep Patil, Ravi Shastri, Suru Nayak etc. The team won many corporate tournaments. Now this co has become a Knowledge Park using its real estate

Ans. Nirlon Ltd

7. Another cricket and Mumbai textiles question…He was the richest cricketer outside of royalty of his generation..He was from a business family that ran textile Mills…After retiring from cricket he ran his business..His cricket record was so good that his first class batting average is second only to Don Bradman..There is a BCCI tournament named after him.

The mill he ran has closed down and the land is being used for developing real estate

Name the cricketer and the mill or the business group he belonged to.

Ans. Vijay Merchant ..Hindoostan Spinning and Weaving Mills of Thackersey group

8. In the 1920s , this was among the Top 5 business groups of India.It was into textiles , shipping..It had cement factories that got merged into ACC. This group invested along with Walchand Hirachand in HAL..It had a fairly big shipping co. Till the 1970s its textiles was very popular..Their voile sarees were a rage among women…
In 1994, the head of this group was murdered by a gangster over some land dispute..
The successors could not manage the group and now this group is virtually gone.

Name the group/ brand

Ans. Khatau Makanji

9. A branch of Khataus not the Sunit Khatau one acquired a shoe company in the 1950s from a group which used the group name in the middle after the shoe brand.
This footwear co became No 2 in the footwear business in those supply starved days. They had similar designs like Bata’s for Hawaii chappals, school uniform shoes etc. if you did not get your size in Bata and schools were to open next day you bought this brand.
This brand tried to bring innovation by tying up first with a foreign major Puma as India was getting to open to foreign brands in the 1990s.
Just like Bata used to sell Bata through their outlets and under BSC thru other channels, this brand used to do the same selling under C____ name and CSC.

Expand CSC…Remember the S is different and I have given info on what S could be.

Ans. Carona Sahu Co.. Carona brand was promoted by Sahu group and later sold to Khataus.

G.Mohan

Twitter IndiaBusinessQuiz@go_mohan