MARKETING & SALES · DALLAS, TEXAS
I’m Aravind, an M.S. Marketing student at UT Dallas. I bring frontline sales experience at The Home Depot to my interest in customers, commercial decisions, and how good ideas reach the market.
From the sales floor
to the bigger picture.
My experience starts with real customer conversations: understanding needs, explaining options, and helping people make purchasing decisions. At The Home Depot, that has meant consultative appliance sales, product recommendations, and customer follow-up.
At UT Dallas, I’m building on that foundation through marketing study and academic projects in pricing strategy, AI-assisted research, and digital product development. I’m interested in roles where customer relationships, analytical thinking, and commercial execution work together.
The University of Texas at Dallas
August 2025 – May 2027 (expected)Birla Institute of Technology & Science
August 2019 – July 202302 / EXPERIENCE
Customer-facing sales and an analytical foundation, brought together in one professional path.
RETAIL SALES & OPERATIONS
Two roles. A foundation in customers,
products, and day-to-day execution.
Dec 2024 – Present Richardson, TX
Consultative selling, tailored product recommendations, and consistent follow-up to support customers through appliance purchases.
Apr 2024 – Dec 2024 San Mateo, CA
Explained promotional financing options and customer savings opportunities while supporting weekly store credit goals.
Burlingame, California
Generated $70K in retail sales with an average of 2.0 units per transaction, using product knowledge and personalized recommendations across handbags, apparel, and accessories.
India
Back-tested trading strategies across 1,500 stock portfolios. Built Python analysis workflows with Pandas, NumPy, TA-Lib, and Matplotlib for strategy testing and visualization.
Experience figures reflect the supplied résumé. Credit figures refer to applications.
03 / SELECTED ACADEMIC WORK
From a marketing concept to a working student product, with further work in pricing strategy, research automation, and survey design.
MKT 6301 → MIS 6393
Work that began with Home Utility Concierge in MKT 6301 continued into MIS 6393. The focus developed from utility setup into CampusBridge: a personalized first-30-days guide for international students at UT Dallas.
MKT 6301 → MIS 6393 · THE STARTING CONCEPT
A team service concept connecting household needs, utility pricing choices, and a guided approach to setting up essential home services.
How could a home utility concierge serve different households and communicate its value?
Led a five-person team analyzing household segments and comparing flat-rate with time-of-use pricing models.
The concept carried forward into MIS 6393, where further customer research broadened the focus from utility setup to the student arrival journey behind CampusBridge.
A go-to-market plan for the concept, with proposed KPI dashboards to evaluate adoption, retention, and customer profitability in a future pilot.
MIS 6393 · CONTINUED FROM MKT 6301
A student-built arrival guide for international students at UT Dallas, developed from the earlier Home Utility Concierge concept.
How can newly arrived international students organize essential tasks and find the right support during their first 30 days at UT Dallas?
Customer research shifted the focus from utility setup alone to a broader arrival journey. Utility setup became a conditional module within a personalized student plan.
A profile-based starting point, prioritized next steps, connections to official UT Dallas and local resources, and progress tracking. Developed as a student project by the Product Alchemy team, independently of UT Dallas.
Additional projects from my graduate marketing coursework.
MKT 6336 · PRICING ANALYTICS
A team case study examining how customer segments, competitors, and supply-chain costs shape retail pricing decisions.
How can a home improvement retailer respond to rising costs and changing demand while maintaining customer value and protecting margins?
Contributed to a team analysis of cost-based and competitive dynamic pricing, DIY and professional customer segments, tariffs, and lumber costs. The case also considered vertical integration and supplier investment.
An academic case study and presentation connecting pricing decisions with customer needs, competitive conditions, and margin protection.
MKT 6364 · AI IN MARKETING
A team-built Langflow workflow combining internal strategy context with web research to explore competitors, market gaps, and product opportunities.
How can an AI workflow connect internal product strategy with external market research?
Combined meeting context, web research, and structured prompts in Langflow to organize competitor and opportunity analysis. The team considered grounding rules, hallucination risks, and API-cost trade-offs.
An exported workflow, system prompts, and a team report discussing reliability limitations and cost-management approaches.
MKT 6364 · AI IN MARKETING
A team project developing and testing a chatbot for Urban Threader, a fictional streetwear brand, with a focus on accuracy and brand consistency.
How can a retail chatbot make useful product recommendations while maintaining accuracy, privacy, and brand consistency?
Evaluated product hallucinations, refund handling, privacy, gender assumptions in recommendations, and brand tone. The team revised the system prompt to address the observed failure cases using GPT-4.1 through OpenRouter.
A documented chatbot test report, presentation, and revised prompts for the fictional brand.
MKT 6364 · AI IN MARKETING
An n8n workflow using customer filters and AI-generated summaries to explore purchasing behavior, engagement, and potential marketing actions.
How can customer behavior and value inform differentiated marketing actions?
Used filtering and aggregation steps to organize customer data, then generated summaries of higher- and lower-value groups with AI agents.
A workflow export, segmentation rationale, and written analysis connecting the groups with proposed loyalty, retention, and personalization actions.
A Qualtrics survey design project covering student purchasing preferences and demographics. Current work focuses on the questionnaire; no survey findings are claimed.
Survey designA commercial mindset.
An analytical toolkit.
Tools and methods from my work experience, résumé, and graduate projects.
Consultative selling · Product recommendations · Customer follow-up · Lead qualification · Salesforce · SAP
Excel · Tableau · SQL · Python · R · Google Analytics · Adobe Analytics
Customer segmentation · Pricing analysis · Go-to-market planning · Product discovery · KPI recommendations · Survey design
Langflow · n8n · Playwright MCP · PowerPoint · Canva · Qualtrics
05 / LET’S CONNECT
I’m interested in opportunities across sales operations, account management, marketing analytics, and product marketing.
aravind.venkatakrishna@utdallas.edu