Here's a challenge for you: selling ketchup in India.

Beef -- it's definitely not what's for dinner in a Hindu home. Heinz held a contest last month that ended with the kind of moment most of us see only on "The Apprentice." Teams of students from seven area high schools traded their jeans for suits and attempted to wow the food magnates in the big boardroom at Heinz headquarters on Sixth Avenue.

When it was over, a foursome from Allderdice won the top prize -- a $750 scholarship, Hampton finished second and Franklin Regional third. I drove out to the school in Squirrel Hill to meet Matthew Kurs-Lasky, Maja Zioncheck, Tanmay Manohar and Ezra Jampole, the team that found a way to make you reach for the ketchup when no burgers, hot dogs or fries are in sight.

I knew the dangers of Americans straying into foreign cultures with ill-conceived marketing campaigns. The Chevy Nova famously tanked in Mexico some years ago. Some urban legends erroneously claim that the vehicle didn't sell well because the Spanish translation of "no va" is "don't go." And the students' sponsor, Spanish teacher Eileen Swazuk, said "come alive with the Pepsi generation" came out as "Pepsi makes your ancestors come back to life" when translated in Chinese. (Somebody call George Romero.)

But it turns out ketchup is pretty adaptable, and so this project did not approach selling air conditioners to Eskimos in its degree of difficulty. Manohar, born in India, has been putting ketchup on his native fare for most of his life.

"I adore ketchup," he said. "I've tried it with Indian sweets, and I just gross out my mom. I support Heinz quite a bit."

Heinz India already produces ketchup, as do competitors, so the idea of Heinz using one of these students' ideas on 15 percent of the world's population, while a long shot, is not out of the question.

So on the same morning as a front-page story on Heinz buying a majority interest in Russia's No. 2 ketchup maker (first one to name the No. 1 Russian ketchup maker wins half of my next Primanti sandwich) I met the students tackling a subcontinent. And I learned that if you ever want to tell ketchup makers how to sell ketchup, this is how you do it:

Carry in a five-foot-tall inflatable ketchup bottle with a Hindi label, wear ketchup bottle lapel pins and show them how good the Heinz logo looks on cricket jerseys and tap into India's favorite sport.

Show how ketchup is not just a condiment, but a taste enhancer for Indian side dishes and snacks.

Put in more than 60 hours of work apiece before you get there.

Jason Bloch, a 1996 Allderdice grad, now a Heinz customer accounting analyst, was the students' mentor. He said this might have been a semester-long project in a graduate school, and these four high school juniors were able to put together a polished presentation inside of four months.

Anagha Manohar, Tanmay's mother, donned a sari to play the Indian homemaker in a commercial the students made. Her family has connections in Bollywood, the Indian film industry, and so she was a natural, but the idea is to appeal to consumers in a country where woman shop daily for the household.

Kurs-Lasky said the inclusion of the Indian symbol for non-meat foods, similar to the "K" on kosher products in the United States, also set the Allderdice presentation apart. As did cricket.

While other schools suggested the same Bollywood starlet to sell their product, this group used Sachin Tendulkar, one of the best batsmen in all of cricketdom. Here we go, Tendulkar, here we go.

One piece of advice from the people who tried everything, though. Ketchup and curry still don't mix.