PERSPECTIVE. How to build a dream career

 Kal Raman, former CEO, Asia Pacific region, Groupon, has humble origins. He grew up with four siblings in a village deep inside South India and his family had limited resources.

His career, however, has been a dream. Sample this: at 25, Kal Raman was the youngest director at Walmart, the global retail giant. He took over as the CEO of Drugstore.com, a listed e-commerce company focussed on healthcare in 2001, when he was just 30 years old. Under his watch, the company’s revenue grew 70 per cent to $246 million in a difficult three-year period after the dotcom collapse. GlobalScholar, an education software start-up he founded was sold profitably for $160 million. Besides Walmart, he had held senior executive positions at other big names including Blockbuster, eBay, and Amazon.

   What is the secret behind his success?

  First is his penchant for taking risks. “I got admitted into a medical college in Tirunelveli, close to home. But I opted for an engineering college in Chennai. I wanted to see the world, break out of small town comfort and prove myself,” he recalls. Similarly, when he was offered a permanent position in the company he worked at Edinburgh, UK, he risked moving to the other side of the Atlantic. That decision took him to Walmart and introduced him to the exciting world of retail.  

 The second trait that defines him is his never-say-die attitude. He describes his early years as a rookie electrical engineer at Tata Consulting Engineers. “The big boss wanted a volunteer to code software for scheduling projects,” he recounts. “I didn’t know programming, but raised my hand.” Kal persevered in learning and finishing the assignment. The end product was a handy tool that saved time and resources.

    The third aspect that made a difference in his career was his penchant for learning. When presented with the option of higher salary versus better learning opportunity, he chose the latter. “I was working as a consultant at Walmart in 1992, earning an annual salary of around $70,000. Walmart offered me an employee position paying $35,000 a year. I took it because consultants are not allowed to work on many important projects,” he explains.

He was promoted at break-neck speed. He became the youngest director at the global retail giant when he was just 25- years-old. But none of these qualities matter if one does not take responsibility.

This incident from Kal’s early career highlights that. “Tata Consultancy Services sent me to Singapore to deliver a tape loaded with a program. It was very routine work – hand-over the tape to a person at IBM, wait an hour till they check it and then go all-out shopping,” he says. But, on the Friday he hands over the tape, things are far from perfect. The program crashed. The IBM engineer still gave him a go-ahead to leave, but Kal felt it was his responsibility. He did not know code, but hung around all of Friday and Saturday. By Sunday, still glued to the chair, he had understood enough pieces and contributed to finding the bug.

   Also, Kal never forgets the people he has a responsibility towards. Take the difficult job of  letting employees go. “It is heart-wrenching to take decisions on lay-offs. But I try to remember that besides the people who you see working with you, there are two sets of people you don’t see. They are the shareholders and your customers. They must be treated fairly. Putting that in perspective helps me make these decisions,” he says.

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