Venkat Valliappan’s experience in book marketing and distribution has been vast and rich, having started with Palgrave Macmillan, UK, and completing 19 years there, finally as Regional Manager, and later with stints at Taylor and Francis, India, as Regional Manager, Mapin Publishing Pvt. Ltd, Ahmedabad, as National Sales Manager and at Indiaplaza, Bangalore, as Category Head (Books). He is currently Director, Apple Publishing International Pvt Ltd. and is based at Chennai. Venkat has completed his BBA (Marketing Research and Sales Administration) from Madurai Kamaraj University and has an MMM degree in Marketing Management from JBIMS, Mumbai University. He also holds a Certificate in E-Publishing (Digital Publishing) from the Indian Institute of Management (K).
After a six month stint with Apple Publishing, Chennai, where Mr. Valliappan was responsible for starting a new business vertical called Apple Academic Publishing, that specialized in publishing books that were first published more than 75 years ago but are still popular with its readers, he was appointed as exclusive Sales Agent for Ingram,USA for the region covering India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal. Bhutan,Maldives and Afghanistan. Arguably the largest distributor of printed books in the world, Ingram represents more than 15,000 publishers, holding roughly around 15 million titles across its 4 warehouses in the US of A. Venkat feels that its entry into India will benefit brick and mortar retailers who will have access to more titles and libraries who will not be compelled any more to buy only what is locally available.
As a result of his current assignment, Venkat can boast of working with almost all segments of the book business viz. STM, HSS, trade and fiction, and illustrated and children’s books.