Will management rejig be a game changer for Groupon?

From being Forbes' fastest growing company ever to registering one of the worst IPO runs since the dot com debacle, Groupon, the big daddy of deals on the internet has seen it all in just five years.

The company is now desperately trying to reinvent itself and win back investor confidence. The group buying deals and discount site hasn't has had a good start to the year. Founder, CEO Andrew Mason was finally asked to go by the board and the stock is being punished by Wall Street.

Also read: A trimmer, sharper Groupon seen in the post-Mason era

Kal Raman, tipped to be one of the frontrunners for the CEOs job and the current COO of Groupon was in India to launch the firm's first R&D centre for the Asia-Pacific region in Chennai.  An aluminous of the Guindy Engineering College in Chennai, Raman is a 20-year veteran in technology and retail.

After having worked with Amazon, as well as turning entrepreneur with his tech start-up GlobalScholar.com, Raman joined Groupon in 2012 as senior vice president global sales and operations, and today faces the biggest test of his career. 

Talking to CNBC-TV18, Raman said, "Groupon is probably the most misunderstood company I have ever been part of. Whatever you said, about repeated missing of earnings, and the stock being 80 percent of the IPO price - they are all very correct and truthful statements. So, first, Groupon is not building a company, it is building a category. Local e-commerce as a category never existed four years back." 

In 2011, this company did approximately USD 3.5 billion in billings and lost USD 220 million. In 2012, it did USD 5.4 billion in billings and made a profit of USD 98 million, and the balance sheet has grown every quarter since the company went public. 

The company's US business as been fully operational for three to four years, while majority of its international business has been around only for two years. "So, you are talking about an end company which is trying to grow and trying to forecast, predict and do all the right things like a mature company. That is where we kind of had mis-steps and we have being doing things wrong," he added.  

"To me, the single biggest advantage of going public is basically telling the world a category or a company has come which never existed before."  Eric who is the current interim CEO and Ted Leonsis have been working together as a team for the last three to four years.

Eric, being an executive chairman, has been involved in the details of every major decision Groupon has made. Ted Leonsis, a veteran in many industries, he has been giving input on all important matters.

"So, it is more of a team. Groupon is a company which is not about individuals, it is about a company. The true ecosystem which surrounds the company in our case are the merchants, the customers and the shareholders - no one person is indispensable be it Andrew or me or anybody. So, either we all feel the heat or we are all chilling out," Raman says. 

Explaining the company's strategy, he says "Unlike many other companies, Groupon is not a company which needs a CEO to change the strategy or turn the company around, making decisions in a different way then what we made in the last nine months."

"We have been violently in agreement with what should happen with Groupon and we focus more on controlling the controllable which is all about merchant experience and customer experience. Who the leader is, is kind of immaterial because the leadership is totally aligned in building long-term shareholder value by putting the merchants and customers first." 

The recently launched Chennai R&D centre is amongst the five global R&D centres that Groupon has. There are currently less than 200 people and this centre would play a role in helping with the expansion in India and rest of the Asia-Pacific countries.

The company does more than 40 percent of its business in mobile phones worldwide. It is one of the very few companies which has got more than 25,000 downloads in the US, which is still rated 5 star. "We need to get better in Android and the remaining Symbian and Nokia operating systems," Raman says.

Groupon came into India by acquiring SoSasta.com, and is looking at merger and acquisition (M&A) possibilities even now.

"The moment we get something, if we believe that is the best use to use our balance sheet to enhance shareholders value that would be the first thing we would do," says Raman. 

Talking about the road ahead for Groupon and future plans, Raman says, "If you consider what we are doing is a marathon, we are not even in the first mile. We are trying to change customer and merchant behaviour. It is a USD 3 trillion opportunity, and we don't event have 50 basis point of the total opportunity. 5-10 years down the road there is no reason why local e-commerce should not be 15 percent of local commerce. "