After obtaining an MBA in international business and finance from the Australia Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, Agarwal started his career with Commander Communications Limited. He worked on various fibre projects with different entities of the company for three years. Thereafter, he moved to Birla Ericsson Optical Limited, where he held various positions, including general manager of the company’s telecom business and head of its broadband access business.

Two years later, he joined Ericsson in a dual role, as business manager, Ericsson Cables, Sweden, and as general manager, Ericsson India. In his current position, Agarwal is responsible for establishing the company as a leading vendor for FTTH fibre solutions and for driving Ericsson’s fibre roll-out, design, consulting and planning domains. He is also responsible for developing competence and a technology ecosystem within the company.

Agarwal considers his stint with Ericsson India as his most memorable. “My current position has been my career’s most challenging. The fibre and cable business has always been on the company’s radar. Ericsson Cables, Sweden, believed in my capabilities and thus created a position in India in 2007 to establish and develop the fibre business in the region. The breakthrough came within the first year of my taking up this role. This was India’s first ever commercial deployment of fibre. It helped establish Ericsson’s position in the country’s fibre space,” he says.

Now, the main target before him is to position Ericsson as one of the leading players in the engineering, procurement and construction of fibre networks. “We have established a Fibre Competence Center in the Philippines and have several global success stories in rolling out fibre networks or designing efficient FTTH networks. Currently, there are around 30,000 homes in the National Capital Region and Hyderabad that are connected via Ericsson’s fibre network. With this head start, my target is to secure volumes and margins from existing businesses and build competence for rolling out pan-Indian fibre networks,” he says.