Guest Session by Mr. Dileep Agrawal: Digital Connectivity, Entrepreneurship, and Nepal’s Tech Future at Embark College

Guest Session by Mr. Dileep Agrawal, Founder and Chairman of WorldLink Communications

Over three decades ago, when most Nepalis had never heard of the internet, a 22-year-old with a biochemistry degree and a belief in what connectivity could do decided to build something from scratch. That company is now WorldLink Communications, Nepal’s largest internet and network service provider, reaching households across more than 74 districts nationwide.

Mr. Dileep Agrawal’s journey from a biochemistry major at Bates College in the United States to the founder of a company that has fundamentally reshaped how Nepal connects is not a straightforward one. It is a story built on conviction, patience, and the kind of resilience that only comes from navigating decades of technological, economic, and organisational change – often without a roadmap.

At Embark College, facilitated by visiting faculty Ms. Shreeya Bhattarai, our MBA cohort had the rare opportunity to sit with Mr. Agrawal and hear that story firsthand.

Here is how the conversation unfolded.

As a student in the United States, Mr. Agrawal recalled his early college days in the 1990s, a time when calling home to Nepal cost a small fortune by the second. Yet in the US, he and his brother could reach each other instantly over the internet. That contrast was the seed. The realisation that this technology could collapse distance and cost in ways a phone call never could stayed with him and eventually became the founding conviction behind WorldLink. He was candid about the fact that there was no clear plan at the outset. The thing that kept him moving forward, he said, was simply the certainty that he wanted to build something in Nepal. The destination was clear even when the road was not.

When the conversation turned to leadership, Mr. Agrawal was equally direct. In the early years of building WorldLink, he described his style as deliberately autocratic, out of necessity. Decisions needed to be made fast, and not every decision, he noted, can be made to please everyone. But three decades and 5,500 employees later, that approach has evolved significantly. Today, he spoke of the importance of stepping back, of surrounding yourself with people who know more than you do in their respective domains, and having the discipline to trust their judgment. Knowing what you do not know, he suggested, is one of the most underrated qualities a leader can develop.

The road to that self-awareness was not without its tests. When asked about the single biggest external disruption WorldLink had faced, Mr. Agrawal pointed to 2008, when Nepal Telecom launched commercial broadband ADSL, leveraging its own copper telephone line infrastructure, an asset WorldLink simply did not have access to. Rather than being discouraged, he chose to focus on what the company could control, which is stabilising the existing customer base and maintaining service continuity while a better solution emerged. It was not a glamorous strategy, he acknowledged, but it was a grounded one. Sometimes, he suggested, survival is the strategy.

Beyond WorldLink, Mr. Agrawal has channelled his energy into social enterprises including UWS Nepal, where he serves in an advisory capacity. He was straightforward with his reasoning: meaningful development in Nepal cannot happen without addressing education at the grassroots level. For him, these initiatives are not a distraction from business but an extension of the same long-term thinking that has guided WorldLink for thirty years.

The conversation then turned to the room itself and to the generation sitting in the audience. With early-career professionals making up much of the audience, the question of artificial intelligence and what it means for their futures was unavoidable. Mr. Agrawal’s answer was neither alarming nor dismissive. Embrace it, he said, but do so with intention. In a world where AI is rapidly reshaping every industry, the professionals who will stand out are not those who resist the technology but those who demonstrate they can use it to solve real problems. He encouraged students to build visible proof of that adaptability through projects rather than just telling.

Mr. Agrawal spoke with equal conviction about the importance of self-awareness, urging students to invest time in understanding who they are and where their strengths genuinely lie. Tools like the MBTI personality framework, he suggested, are not just corporate exercises but genuine starting points for understanding how you think, how you work, and where you are most likely to thrive. In a market where the only constant is change, curiosity and adaptability will matter long after any specific technical knowledge has become obsolete.

The session closed with the most personal question of the morning – what keeps Mr. Agrawal going, after nearly three decades at the top of an industry he helped build from nothing? His answer was simple. It comes down, he said, to the pursuit of his own best version. What drives him is a quiet but relentless curiosity – the desire to keep learning, keep improving, and keep discovering what he is truly capable of.

For a room full of early-career professionals still mapping out their futures, it was a quietly powerful note to end on. Thirty years of building Nepal’s most consequential technology company, and the thing that still gets him going each day is the same thing that made him start – the belief that there is always more to discover, more to attempt, and more to become.

Written by Ms. Shreeya Bhattarai

Ms. Shreeya Bhattarai is a visiting faculty member at Embark College, where she teaches Strategic Leadership and Change to MBA students. A Swedish Institute Scholar and Royal Thai Government Scholar, she holds an MSc in Data Analytics and Business Economics from Lund University, Sweden, and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand. With a professional background spanning project management, data operations, and facilitation across international environments, she brings a practitioner’s lens to the classroom bridging academic frameworks with real-world application.