Parallel Wireless has poached a senior executive from a key rival to head up its product management.
Parallel has appointed Reni Ninan as Senior VP and Head of Product Management, with Ninan joining directly from rival vendor Mavenir where he has been VP and Head of Global RAN Operations for the past three years.
Ninan replaces Kaitki Agarwal who was Parallel’s previous Chief Product Officer. Agarwal left Parallel in 2020 with her co-founder Rajesh Mishra, who was at that point President and CTO, to found a start-up called A5GNetworks.
Ninan led Mavenir’s RAN Operations as the company expanded its RAN capabilities and sought to leverage the Open RAN trend to market its vRAN software. After opening offices in Stockholm in 2019, Mavenir acquired radio software developer ip.access in 2020, adding that company’s 2/3G RAN software and small cells know-how to an Emerging Business division headed up by Aniruddho Basu.
Prior to his stint at Mavenir, Ninan had eight years in a variety of roles at Ericsson, and before that 12 years at Nortel, before joining Ericsson as part of Nortel’s acquisition by that company. Ninan has kept a low public profile at Mavenir, as Radio GM Mikael Rylander, Basu and business development lead John Baker often headed up the company’s public messaging around Open RAN.
A Parallel spokesperson said in a comment to TMN, “We are happy to have Reni join Parallel Wireless. As we are expanding the customer footprint, his expertise in customer operations and product management will help us make our customer successful.”