Monday, 25 February 2013
Arun Tadanki, managing director of Yahoo India & Southeast Asia, will leave Yahoo in July. He had joined Yahoo India as MD in 2009.
Tadanki's exit comes at a time when Yahoo is doing a major makeover under its latest CEO, Marissa Mayer, a Google veteran who took over in July last year. A statement from Yahoo quoted Tadanki as saying that he had worked for 11 years in CEO roles for Apac/ emerging markets regions at multinational internet companies, and he was looking forward to playing a very different role within the internet ecosystem, beyond this region. No further details were provided about his plans, or who would replace him at Yahoo. The gain was marginal though, and Yahoo still is not keeping pace with the overall growth of the internet ad market. Mayer is Yahoo's fifth permanent or interim CEO since 2008.
A Yahoo spokesperson said about Takanki: "Under Arun's leadership, Yahoo India has seen impressive growth both in terms of users and advertising, outpacing the market. During the last 3 years, Arun also secured strong partnerships that drove 6-fold growth in Yahoo's mobile users in India. He led the formation of the editorial operation, delivering 15-fold traffic growth in Yahoo India's content properties. He played a key role in localizing the Yahoo experience with extensive local content partnerships across categories such as cricket, Bollywood, entertainment & news, in English and six local languages."
Prior to Yahoo, Tadanki was president of Monster.com's Apac & Middle East operations for seven years. He became part of Monster in April 2002 when it acquired JobsAhead.com, where he was head of sales and marketing. Prior to this, he worked as head of the culinary business at Nestle India, where he spent eight years. He holds an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad and an engineering degree from IIT-Madras.
