By Razi Iqbal

Edited By Shambhavi Singh, Senior Editor, The Indian Economist

I present to you an article containing weird, jaw dropping, and logic defying idiosyncrasies in the business world. This article is very different from the otherwise opinionative articles my fellow columnists and I usually come up with.

1)  Henry Ford developed the first assembly line for automobiles in the world. Ford supposedly got the idea from a process that was used to slaughter pigs.

2)  Although the Toyota group is best known today for its cars, it is still in the textile business, and makes automatic looms and electric sewing machines.

3)  The last breath of Thomas Edison (founder of General Electric) is reportedly contained in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum.

4)  Bank of America (one of the largest banks in the U.S.) was founded as the ‘Bank of Italy’ to cater to immigrants who were denied service from other banks.

5)  The Deutsche bank twin towers consist of two skyscrapers that are each 155 meters high. They are known as ‘debit’ and ‘credit’.

6)  Before starting P&G, William Procter was a candle-maker and James Gamble was a soap-maker. The founders might have never met had they not married sisters- Olivia and Elizabeth Norris whose father convinced his two sons-in-law to become business partners.

7)  The logo of CISCO is based upon the design of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge.

8)  Bill Hewett and David Packard flipped a coin to decide the ordering of their name HP, rather than PH.

9)  Phillips has the contract to light up Eiffel Tower, Time Square, Golden Gate Bridge and the Pyramids of Giza.

10)  Sports giant ESPN is owned by The Walt Disney Company!

11)  All brands from the Virgin group have the prefix ‘virgin’ except condoms which are called ‘mates’ condoms.

12)  The logo of Godrej is the signature of its founder, Ardeshir Godrej.

13)  Maneka Gandhi did modelling for Bombay Dyeing and that was where Sanjay Gandhi spotted her. She met him when she was 17 and got married within a year.

14)  HCL was founded with an investment of Rs 1,87,000 from the 6 founders and added Uttar Pradesh government as a 26% equity partner due to lack of funds.

15)  Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the founder of Biocon, qualified as a master brewer from Australia’s Ballarat University. However, in India she was unable to find a job because of her gender which led her to start her own company in a rented garage with two employees.

16)  Both the founders of Flipkart, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal are from IIT Delhi and used to work at

17)  In June 2011, Snapdeal adopted a remote village (Shiv nagar, UP) in India and enabled clean drinking water facilities by installing manual pumps. To show their gratitude, the village’s residents decided to rename their village to nagar.

18)  Mahatma Gandhi was at G.D. Birla’s home in New Delhi before he was assassinated in 1948. He had been living there for the last four months of his life.

Razi is a second year economics student at Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi. A cricket fanatic and an avid reader, Razi believes that ‘the big bang theory’ and his passion for biking provide him the necessary fuel in his life. His interests in economics lie in psychology based subjects like game theory and behavioral economics. His focus in life right now is on the subject ‘how to best enjoy college life’. You can email him at

Posted by The Indian Economist | For the Curious Mind