About

Architect. Builder. Problem solver.

An Ohio practice founded in 2003. Small by design, so the person who scopes the work is the person who does it.

Illustration of Lalit Agrawal at his desk, with his whiteboard of capabilities and the systems he designs
Portrait of Lalit Agrawal, founder of Cherry Group

Lalit Agrawal

Founder and principal solution architect

  • C#
  • .NET
  • SQL Server
  • React
  • Python
  • Django
  • Kendo / Telerik
  • RabbitMQ
  • APIs & events
  • Azure
  • AWS
  • Databricks
  • Snowflake

Lalit is a principal solution architect and a former senior consultant at Microsoft. His work lines up software architecture with what a business actually needs to achieve: growth it can afford, risk it can explain, and systems its own people can run.

Today that increasingly means data and AI: connecting the systems a business already runs into one trustworthy data foundation, automating the processes that hold people back, and adding the AI use cases that pay for themselves, from forecasting and dynamic pricing to customer support.

He holds that technical decisions must serve the balance sheet. That means weighing the hard trade-offs instead of following technology hype, and choosing architectures for their total cost of ownership and long-term performance.

Rather than tying himself to one tool, he works from the fundamentals that every platform depends on: database theory, transaction isolation levels, concurrency models and object-oriented design. Most of his systems run on .NET and SQL Server, increasingly on Azure and AWS.

Career

  1. 2003 to today

    Founder and principal solution architect, Cherry Group, Inc.

    An independent practice delivering custom software, process automation, platform architecture and technical advisory to organizations in retail, e-commerce, manufacturing, healthcare, education and the public sector. Advisory principal architect for Tyremarket.com since 2015.

    • Led OneBizDesk, an end-to-end business platform spanning eCommerce, supply chain, inventory, order processing and reporting, integrated with Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Shopify. Client revenue grew 20x to $100M a year.
    • Built a manufacturing and warehouse solution that supported a $1B acquisition.
    • Created Tyremarket.com, an online marketplace for tires, tubes and alloy wheels, and a marketplace repricing SaaS service for Amazon and Walmart.
    • Architected a configuration-driven Change Tracking System on SQL Server CT and CDC, with output to APIs, message queues and files, on premises or in the cloud.
    • Integrated benefits systems with WEX and Datapath, and jail commissary systems with the Spillman Jail Management System.
    • Delivered logistics systems that ran at 99.99% uptime.

    See selected work →

  2. 1999 to 2003

    Senior consultant, Microsoft Corporation

    Architecture, design and framework adoption for consulting partners and Fortune 500 clients.

    • Partner strategy consultant to Infosys Technologies: built strategic partnerships and delivered enterprise solutions on Microsoft technologies.
    • Development lead at Reynolds and Reynolds: led a team building automotive retail software on .NET and SQL Server.
    • .NET evangelist at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young: promoted .NET adoption and best practices across enterprise clients.
    • Senior software consultant at Kroger, Convergys and Cinergy: customized solutions to optimize business processes.

  3. 1998 to 1999

    Independent consultant

    Database-driven business systems for regional and national clients.

    • Cincinnati Bell: a web-based data proposal system on SQL Server and ASP that improved proposal generation efficiency by 30%.
    • The Polk Company: a Visual Basic interface for ad hoc queries and reports from a CD-ROM data warehouse.
    • International Collectors Society: an order entry and inventory control system on SQL Server, serving 100 concurrent users.
    • AAData Systems: an application for long-term care facilities with electronic data exchange and better patient data management.

  4. 1992 to 1998

    Director of information systems, Pope Consulting

    Led IT strategy and operations for a Cincinnati training company delivering diversity, equity and inclusion training to Fortune 500 companies across the United States and Canada.

Education

  • University of Cincinnati, M.S. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
  • Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (V.J.T.I.), Mumbai, B.E. in Computer Engineering

Certifications

  • Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure Data Fundamentals
  • Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Fundamentals

Organizations Lalit has worked with or for

  • Microsoft
  • Kroger
  • Reynolds and Reynolds
  • Cap Gemini Ernst & Young
  • Infosys
  • Convergys
  • Cinergy
  • Tyremarket.com
  • Ascensus
  • Process Plus
  • Fortna
  • WEX
  • Catalent
  • Resource One
  • The Polk Company
  • Dearborn County Jail
  • Sygenics
  • International Collectors Society
  • Cincinnati Bell
  • AAData Systems