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İstanbul Named Groupon’s New Emerging Markets HQ

İstanbul Named Groupon’s New Emerging Markets HQ

The leading deal-of-the-day site Groupon picked İstanbul as its regional base for emerging markets operations.

İstanbul will serve as the base of emerging markets operations like sales, marketing, and business development in countries like Russia, Poland, Israel, Romania, Ukraine, South Africa, UAE. Additionally, finance, operations, and business leadership teams for Eastern Europe, Middle East, and Africa will move to İstanbul.

The region will be managed by Pieter-Jan Vandepitte, VP & GM of Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa. Vandepitte, who has been working with the company for 3 years, was previously GM of Groupon Benelux. Vandepitte’s career track includes names like McKinsey & Company and Deloitte.

Groupon stated that the move to İstanbul was inspired by the city’s central location, innovative market, and focus on e-commerce. Groupon’s international HQ for countries other than the US is located in Schaffhausen, Switzerland.

Groupon International SVP Veit Dengler commented on the new move by saying “Turkey sits at the meeting point of two continents. It is a great opportunity to base our emerging markets operation in a country with a GDP that grows at the rate of China’s. We aim to expand our presence in Turkey. We feel confident under the lead of PJ Vandepitte and country manager Onur Aydın.”

Groupon runs its activities in Turkey over Şehir Fırsatı. The deal site plans to deploy new personalized services like Merchant Center and Smart Deals to Turkey by the end of the year. Groupon has been managed by Onur Aydın since October 2011.

This article by Bahadır Atasoy, originally published in sosyalmedya.co in Turkish, is adapted into English by Süleyman Okan.

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