VoIP is a technology used for routing international call traffic for those who prefer to use fixed lines

or mobiles over applications such as Skype. One person who was involved with a company using this

technology as its core routing mechanism was Karan Singh.

Karan Singh studied at Mill Hill Private School before attending Manchester University and

graduating with a degree in Economics. Karan Singh had resided in the UK for the majority of his life.

Karan Singh has always had an interest in corporate finance and management and since school he

has always taken a keen interest in analysis and strategy.

Karan Singh begun his working career while still at University. His first transaction was purchasing a

flat for investment purposes in Paddington, London. He had bought the flat off plan and had sold it 6

months later making a 100% profit on the invested cash in that period.

Karan Singh then partnered up with a friend from college who was from Thailand and they started

their first company AG Soft. AG Soft was initially begun as an application development software

company. The idea was that there would be a specialised team based out of Bangkok where AGS

could outsource work from European companies with regards to application development. The team

that was developed started their works within application development doing works for large job

recruitment sites, small telecoms companies and other e commerce websites.

Whilst developing software the team in Bangkok had come across a new technology that had

become advanced enough to become commercially viable. This technology was called Voice Over IP.

This technology takes voice and using telephony switching equipment it converts this voice into

data. This data is then carried over the internet (free carry as opposed to traditional switching

methods of using fibre optics etc) and then converted back into voice at the point of its termination

destination (which was internally called the prison point). This technology is used for carrying

international voice traffic. It is as if the caller is benefiting from services such as skype and only

paying the local carrying charges as calls are being made from fixed lines or mobiles.

AG soft then set up its first international voice switch in Thailand. AG Soft then became part of

telephony exchanges where the voice traffic to Thailand they were making available was sold. The

growth the company saw using this technology was immense and an offer was made by Karan Singhs

partner for a buy out of his shares. This offer was accepted and that funding was used to fund the

capitalisation of Cypher 7 Tel 7. Cypher 7 employed the same strategy as AG Soft with two major

differences. The first was that the traffic being sold was going to be sold to major carriers such as

British telecom, band x, Singtel, At&t etc and the other was that it if it was going to be able to host

such large carriers it would need to offer more international destinations than just be restricted in

offering one international destination as part of its offering. Following this a number of POPs (points

of presence) were set up and many interconnecting agreements were developed with major telecom

carriers.

In 2009 Cypher 7's assets were sold through a formal process and Karan Singh then engaged in his

next venture in private equity. This private equity fund worked with Parklane developments that

focused on real estate developments in emerging markets with a focus on North Africa. Due to the

growing market in North Africa and its booming property market, Karan Singh had noticed the true

potential of being able to carry out residential developments in a place where access was not

accessible to all. Tying up with Park Lane developments gave that access and allowed Karan Singh to

capitalise on the real estate opportunities available in these markets.

Karan Singh also engages in charitable work and places a degree of importance on social

responsibility.

Although Karan Singh is not linked to Voip technology anymore he does believe that there is a huge

scope for this technology to develop and in time traditional