At work, at play

GIZMOPHILE

Saket Agarwal ditched his class XII pre-board exams to participate in a national badminton championship. Is it mere luck that he won the championship and went on to score a cool 95 per cent in his board examinations? "Given a chance I would have become a sportsman," he confesses but after completing his electronics engineering degree, followed by an MSc in physics from BITS Pilani, Agarwal fell in love with the telecommunication sector.

Now, as the chief operating officer of Cellebrum, he is engaged in developing and delivering end-to-end technologies and solutions for the wireless Internet industry. Agarwal believes in "making business sense out of technology" and thus he is busy investing in multimedia and video-based value-added services for the wireless industry.

But, sports are not forgotten in the humdrum of work life. Every weekend, Agarwal insists that he makes "a conscious effort to play a good hand of table tennis and an engaging round of badminton". The passion spills over to the workplace too.

"I have made sure that my employees also indulge themselves instead of being hunched up over their laptops," he says. That explains how Cellebrum got a table tennis and gym area on his insistence. So, isn't golf on the list too? "Not now, I am too young for it," pat comes the reply.

Not exactly a geek, Agarwal does not load himself with the latest gadgetry. "I do not champion the need to carry multiple gadgets when a mobile phone and laptop serve well enough," he says. If not playing or learning to dance from his young daughters, Agarwal catches up on his reading.

"From Jack Welch to books on spirituality, I have read them all," he finishes. Although work takes precedence for the COO, he has no intention of missing out on the World Cup 2007 matches. Matches that will not be played during work hours will be on his watchlist.