Meet Groupon COO Kal Raman

He loves cricket and Rajnikant, not necessarily in that order, wants to own an IPL team and is not spooked by the way his company's stock price has performed after a much-hyped initial public offering two years ago.

But then again Groupon COO Kal Raman is hardly a template CXO. He joined the company nine months ago and is seen by many as the front-runner for the position of CEO vacated by Groupon's founder, Andrew Mason. Understandable , since Raman is convinced some of the criticism that his company has triggered is "reality distortion".

"Everyone made Groupon and Andrew Mason look like they were the direct descendants of moksha in 2010 and now everybody thinks they are stupid. The truth is everyone, including Mason, has become smarter in these years and not dumber as the market would like to believe," he says. That does not mean some of the criticism wasn't well deserved.

"Like the bad execution of our European operations or missing our financial targets. We have to improve and correct. That is exactly what the board and Andrew have done. But that doesn't mean that the idea is a failure," he admits.

Raman is in Chennai, where the company has one of its five global R&D centres, to oversee Groupon's expansion in the country. The centre currently has 200 employees with hiring on in full swing. "We would like to see it become our biggest R&D centre," he says.

The current arrangement at the site allows for expansion up to 1,000 people, which is expected to be reached by the same time next year. The other four R&D centres are in Chicago and Palo Alto in the US, Santiago in Chile and Berlin in Germany.

In India, he says that acquisitions are a possibility. "We are open to growth either way — organic or inorganic. We look at acquisitions every day. We have $1.2 billion on our balance sheet with no debt. If any good opportunity comes by, we would definitely consider it," he said.

Born Kalyana Raman Srinivasan in a poor family in Tamil Nadu's Mannarakoil village , Raman moved to Chennai for studies at the College of Engineering, Guindy. He still remembers his first job with Tata Consulting Engineers (TCE) for which he travelled to Mumbai. "My elder brother had only Rs 75 and my friends pooled in some money for a ticket to Mumbai. I slept at Dadar station and left my luggage with a vegetable vendor on my first day to office," he says.

In office, they noticed that he was wearing only chappals and took that as his arrogance because he was the topper of the batch. However , when they came to know that he couldn't afford shoes, they were blown away. "I like people who take risks but you are just living on the edge," said his manager who then helped him with everything.

He continued to achieve success and worked in firms like TCS, Amazon and Walmart and also ran two startups — Global Scholar and Drugstore.com.

Raman is also an ardent fan of Rajnikant. "In the US, I had to always travel to Dallas or Bay area to watch his movies on day one which was very tiring. So I entered into a partnership with a guy who used to distribute south Indian movies in the US on the condition all Rajnikant movies' premiere shows would be screened in Seattle where I live," he says smiling.

Also a huge cricket buff, he says that owning an IPL franchise is one of his goals. "I would like it to be Chennai but it is too expensive," he says laughing.