Qualcomm Incorporated, on Sunday announced the appointment of Sunil Lalvani as its new vice president and president of Qualcomm India, and the departure of Avneesh Agrawal, senior vice president and president of Qualcomm India and South Asia. Lalvani’s appointment will be effective July 27 and he will report directly to Cristiano Amon, executive vice president and co-president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

Lalvani has more than 20 years of experience in sales, business development, strategic planning and business operations across the IT and telecom sectors. He joins Qualcomm from BlackBerry, where he served most recently as managing director of India and SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). In this role, Lalvani was responsible for overseeing and driving BlackBerry’s overall business strategy and growth in India and was focused on driving differentiated solutions for consumers and enterprise customers. Lalvani was also instrumental in leading a strong engagement with Carrier partners and ISV’s in India, to drive uptake of BlackBerry’s services portfolio in the India region. 

Prior to that, Lalvani held the position of Director of Enterprise Sales. Lalvani also has worked at EMC Corporation, Nokia Corporation, Cisco Systems and SITA Equant Network (now Orange Business Services).  Lalvani holds a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering from Bombay University and a post graduate diploma in marketing management from Xavier's Institute of Management, India.

“I am pleased to welcome Sunil Lalvani as vice president and president of Qualcomm India. His broad industry experience and extensive leadership experience will enable us to strengthen existing strategic relationships, identify new opportunities for business growth and build new relationships in India. Under Avneesh’s leadership, Qualcomm led a number of successful efforts to nurture the local ecosystem in India, including accelerating 3G smartphone adoption and 4G LTE deployment, helping Indian brands build new revenue streams and establishing Qualcomm as the premier technology brand in India’s telecom and handset ecosystem. I’d like to thank Avneesh for all of his contributions to these successes,” said Cristiano Amon, executive vice president and co-president, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

During his 21-year tenure, Avneesh Agrawal has played a key role in many of the Company’s key technology initiatives including leading the development of Qualcomm’s first WCDMA and LTE chipsets, and has played a crucial role in driving Qualcomm’s business in India and South Asia.  In 2005 he assumed his role as senior vice president of engineering, where under his direction, the team has implemented a number of key initiatives to expand Qualcomm’s technology leadership and foster the mobile ecosystem in India. He has been granted 159 US patents. Avneesh is moving on to pursue his entrepreneurial ambitions.