Guest speaker talks international business with Watson Graduate School students

Friday, September 25, 2015

Students in Oklahoma State University’s Watson Graduate School of Management received the opportunity recently to hear guest speaker Venkat Tadanki speak about international business.

The cofounder of Daksh, one of the largest independent information technology enabled service companies in India and cofounder and CEO of Service is our Core Value (SECOVA), spoke to students about his experiences with business across borders.

Tadanki discussed the importance of understanding the cultural differences when working abroad. He informed students of the ethical and moral differences across nations.

“Nobody in India gets credit especially in businesses,” said Tadanki. “The U.S. expects 100 percent credit across all channels.”

He explained that professionals coming to work in the United States have to conform and abide by these rules if they want to successfully work in this country.

First-year MBA student Dana McDaniel found this information useful.

“I learned about how important it is to get to know the environment that you are working in,” said McDaniel. “His comparisons between the U.S. and India highlighted this by showing how each country utilizes trust in the workforce.”

Tadanki also discussed the challenges of introducing an existing product to a new country. He gave the example of introducing Pepsi products in India and explained how Indian consumers liked western culture but were not willing to let go of their pride in being Indian.

Because of the consumers’ pride in their country, Pepsi had to use a different market strategy to appeal to the new consumers.

Tadanki is a native Indian, has an MBA from Indian Institute of Management and experience working in the U.S., Europe and India. Because of his qualifications, Spears School of Business marketing professor Ajay Sukhdial felt Tadanki had a lot of international business knowledge to share with students.

“My objective for inviting Mr. Tadanki was to expose my students to a very successful entrepreneur who is working in the international domain so that they may learn from him about entrepreneurship as well as working in a cross-cultural environment,” said Sukhdial.

For more information on OSU’s Watson Graduate School of Management, visit http://watson.okstate.edu/ or call 405-744-9000.