His research has appeared in several journals, including The Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and Harvard Business Review. He is also a co-author of the book Cutting Edge Marketing Analytics. 

Many of his research publications have been recognized with prestigious awards, such as the Don Lehmann Award for the best dissertation-based article, the MSI Alden G. Clayton and the ISBM Outstanding Dissertation Proposal awards, and the ISBM award for long-term contributions to business-to-business marketing. He was selected as one of the Top 20 rising young scholars in marketing by the Marketing Science Institute, one of the Top 40 professors under 40 by Poets & Quants, and recognized among the Top 5 percent of marketing strategy scholars by the Journal of Marketing Education.  

Venkatesan has consulted with firms in the technology, retailing, media, industrial goods and pharmaceutical industries. He has developed custom executive education programs or data analytics software for Capital One, Explore Learning, General Electric, General Dynamics, HBO, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, MAS Holdings, Pitney Bowes, Porsche MHP, Rosetta Stone, SAP and Teradata. For his work with IBM, he was recognized as one of the finalists for the Informs Practice Prize Competition. 

Before coming to Darden, Venkatesan taught graduate students at the University of Connecticut. There, he was the recipient of the MBA Teacher of the Year Award. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Houston and his B.E. in computer engineering from the University of Madras.