Derek O Brien

Derek O’Brien is a popular Indian personality, known for hosting India’s longest-running game show, Bournvita Quiz Contest. He is also a Member of Parliament for Bengali’s All India Trinamool Congress. O’Brien was born on March 13, 1961, in Kolkata, West Bengal in India. He came from an Anglo-Indian household and his father, Neil O’Brien is a known personality in quizzing in India. He studied at St. Xavier’s Collegiate School in Kolkata and later attended St. Columba’s School in Delhi, where he took an English course. Two years after, he went to Scottish Church College and started his career as a journalist for an Indian sports magazine. Later on, she shifted his career to advertising and has worked in one of the largest marketing company called Ogilvy.

Derek hosted the Bournvita Quiz Show, a popular knowledge game show in India. In 2003, he received the Hero Honda Indian Television Academy Awards for Best Anchor of a Game/Quiz Show. He is also doing inter-school quiz competition around the country and also in other countries like Oman, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Nepal, and Pakistan. Aside from working on television, he has more than 50 quiz and reference books for India’s leading publications such as Rupa, Penguin, and Pearson.

O’Brien is the founder of Derek O’Brien & Associates Pvt Ltd in Kolkata, and some of his clients include Vodafone, Cadbury India, Max Life Insurance and more. Derek O’Brien’s firm has been hosting the corporate quiz show entitled The Brand Equity Quiz, since 1991. He started a new quiz series entitled Mind Grind, in the year 2008 in Pakistan. He participated in All India Trinamool Congress in 2004, and currently acting as the Vice President of the party. He headed the Passenger Services Committee of the Indian Railways in 2009, under Mamata Banerjee; the leader of the Railway and Trinamool Congress.

He became a Member of the Parliament on August 19, 2011, and became one of the 16 Members of the Parliament that were elected to West Bengal’s Rajya Sabha. In 2012, O’Brien was the first Anglo-Indian elected member, who cast a vote in the Presidential election for India’s 13th President. He got married to Rila Banerjee in 1991, and they have a daughter named Aanya. They got separated after the year 2005, and he remarries to Tonuca Basu, a doctor who resides in Brooklyn, New York Click to look into! >> Read More... .