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Nick Plumb
@PlumbNick
AI Engineer | Dual-Service Veteran | ex-Amazon L7 & Walmart Store Manager | Fighting for our American jobs, H-1B reform & Texas values
Joined July 2015
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The author’s entire bio: “Arun Agarwal is a civic and business leader in Dallas.” That leaves out one of the more interesting biographies I’ve come across. Start in India. A promotional profile of Agarwal says he earned a B.S. in Jaipur, then an MBA from IMT Ghaziabad and became the “youngest regional manager of JVC Onida for eastern region.” Only after that, according to the profile, did he leave for America to study computer information systems. Agarwal told USA Today he came to America in 1990. But the ages reported for him don’t even agree: D Magazine called him 46 in 2018. Dallas Express called him 51 in 2023. USA Today called him 54 that same year. Depending which age is correct, Agarwal was roughly 18–21 when he arrived - after supposedly completing a bachelor’s, an MBA and becoming the youngest regional manager of a major electronics company. Then there is Anu. In his account of their story, Anu was a young journalist in Kolkata who encouraged Agarwal to leave India and pursue graduate school in America. D Magazine said: Anu pushed him toward a master’s in computer information systems, the couple immigrated after he was accepted and after becoming a citizen Agarwal moved to Dallas in 2002 and supposedly “landed a computer analyst job.” By November 2006, Arun and Anuradha Basu Agarwal were both directors of S2 Resources, an Indian textile/apparel company. That’s two years before D Magazine says Arun began his textile career with Indian giant Alok Industries in 2008. And Anu had her own substantial business history. Public biographies identify her as founder and creative director of SAS Group, whose SAS Living operation was described as one of the largest U.S. distributors of furniture and decorative accessories. The timeline gets stranger. In a recent Site Selection interview, Agarwal said he “started my own company in textiles here in 2000.” But another biography says he didn’t move to Dallas until 2002, took the computer analyst job, and joined Alok in 2008. He later said he “legally separated” the U.S. operation from Alok in 2014 and renamed it Nextt. Yet D Magazine reported in 2018 that Alok still supplied up to 70% of Nextt’s products and described Nextt as Alok’s “exclusive front-end marketing arm.” Then Greg Abbott enters the story. Abbott began appointing Agarwal to state boards in 2016. That first Governor’s Office bio said his computer-information M.S. came from the University of New Hampshire. Later Abbott bios say Southern New Hampshire University. SNHU was formerly called New Hampshire College - not the University of New Hampshire. Abbott’s 2019 bio also called Agarwal’s Harvard credential a Master’s in International Business. By 2022 it was an Advanced Certificate in International Business. Meanwhile Agarwal became a major Abbott donor, then vice chairman and ultimately chairman of the Texas Economic Development Corporation. He helped lead Texas economic missions to India and publicly declared: “Texas is becoming the new IT capital for India.” His Texas-India work involved companies including Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Tech Mahindra and others. And then there is Howdy Modi. Anu & Arun Agarwal were listed as Honorary Committee Co-Chairs. The same event listed longtime HSS leader Ramesh Bhutada as a patron. I have found no evidence that Agarwal himself belongs to HSS or RSS. The documented point is that his civic and political network overlaps with prominent HSS-linked figures. So when Arun Agarwal writes about immigration, UT students and displacement, his background seems relevant. He isn’t merely a “civic and business leader in Dallas.” He’s an India-born former international student whose own published biography contains conflicting ages, dates, schools, credentials and business timelines; an Abbott donor and appointee; a leader of Texas-India economic development; and a prominent organizer in Indian-American political and business networks. A nine-word bio leaves out a lot.
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