The 2006 Virginia 100 - Ringing up a fortune
Cellular pioneers Raj and Neera Singh help start an industry

by Brett Lieberman
Virginia Business
June 2006

As a young boy Rajendra Singh used to draw water by hand for his family from a well in Kairoo, India. The remote farming village in the country’s northwestern Rajasthan province had no electricity, telephones or newspapers. Education was scarce, too; Singh’s father had been the first person in the 400-year-old village to attend high school.

Kairoo is still a poor farming community, but life has improved markedly since Singh grew up there more than four decades ago. Electric pumps now draw water, residents enjoy satellite television, and thanks in large part to Raj and his wife Neera, the 1,500 villagers, along with others around the world, can get a cell phone signal.

Indian immigrants who came to the United States on scholarships, the Singhs represent a modern-day, high-tech fairy tale. They parlayed $42 paid to a computer lab in Manhattan, Kan., in 1982 into a $1 billion fortune. "We didn’t have any business training,"says Raj, 51. "All we knew was technology and how to help people build their networks."

Raj and Neera Singh are pioneers in the wireless industry. Yet the couple and the company they founded, LCC International Inc., are not household names. Unlike telecom stars such as Craig McCaw, they are low-key and publicity-shy. In fact, not since February 1998 have the Singhs sat down with a reporter for an extended interview.

Raj’s nondescript Old Town Alexandria office epitomizes how the couple stays below the radar. There’s no secretary or receptionist. Walls are barren and office furnishings consist of a few chairs and a table with business magazines. In Raj’s office, acrylic awards commemorating various transactions line up along a windowsill. The only piece of art is a framed article of a rare interview he granted nearly a decade ago. The one visible luxury is the office’s spectacular view of the Potomac River, where in warm weather Raj has been known to jet ski to work.

What the couple may have lacked in business acumen, they more than made up in their understanding of physics, electromagnetics and software. The Singhs, who live nearby in Mount Vernon, were among the earliest innovators of the wireless industry. While others were busy buying spectrum or bidding on licenses for cellular networks, the young graduate students spent hours trying to figure how to make the airwaves work.

They started their work in Dallas in 1979 where Raj was learning to squeeze bandwidth out of radio spectrum while working at Southern Methodist University. The couple continued their work when they moved to Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., where Raj landed a $14,000-a-year teaching job in early 1981. Working initially with paper and pencil, he helped design some of the earliest cellular network applications for 12 of the top 30 U.S. markets. "Raj was our expert,"says Craig Farrill, a former AirTouch and PacTel executive who first hired the Singhs. Their first paycheck from Farrill was about $360. "He was going to frame the check, but he needed it to buy a TV set,"recalls Farrill, now co-founder, president and CEO of Kodiak Networks, a California-based provider of advanced wireless systems.

Using all of the money they had at the time — $1,000 — the Singhs in 1983 formed LCC International Inc., a wireless consulting firm. (The name stands for Lunayach Communications Consultants after a family name.) One night they realized how crazy it was to do calculations by hand. The approach worked for one or two transmitter towers but was impractical for large, sophisticated systems. For fun, the couple paid $42 at a computer lab to crunch numbers using an algorithm Neera had developed. The next day they mailed the results to Wayne Schelle, an entrepreneur working to launch a cellular network in the Washington-Baltimore area, one of two approved licenses at the time.

Schelle called the couple immediately, saying their calculations had saved the company at least $80,000 and months of work in deciding where to place cell towers. To entice them to Washington, Schelle offered a furnished apartment and a place to work.

Neera’s algorithms and Raj’s ideas revolutionized the fledgling industry and quickly led to more work for their firm. "[Raj] was one of the pioneers in the industry in network design and coverage and planning and system engineering, which made it possible for us as an industry to roll out more coverage and systems,"says Farrill. The Singhs helped AirTouch design systems in 13 U.S. markets and 30 countries.

Word of their work spread, sparking calls from around the world. "What Neera and I decided was that’s good money. When somebody gets a license, they’re going to have to build a system,"says Raj. They purchased a computer and worked day and night six days a week. Neera crunched numbers; and because they couldn’t afford larger disks, Raj changed the disks that filled quickly.

Despite their growing success, the Singhs still worked for other people who owned the networks or licenses necessary to build a system. Finally, they decided to branch out. With $25,000, a princely sum for them at the time, they launched APEX, a company that connected cell circuits to prevent mobile fraud. Four years later in 1990, they sold the business to Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $50 million.

With the new wealth came freedom. The Singhs began investing in other systems and were early partners in Nextel Communications. In 1990, they hired someone else to run day-to-day operations at LCC. Though no longer involved in the management of the company, they still own 18 percent of its shares. The couple also launched Telcom Ventures, the family’s vehicle for investments. Almost 90 percent of their investments remain in cellular ventures, with the Singhs instrumental in starting cellular systems in many South American countries and in India. Other investments included co-founding Teligent, a high-speed Internet and telecom services business later sold to First Avenue Networks of Charlottesville, and Aether Technologies, a wireless technologies provider.

"Mostly what I do is look at a trend that is happening in the U.S. and … use that knowledge to invest in radio spectrum,"says Raj. One such investment was a $50 million partnership that involves Columbia Capital — former Gov. Mark R. Warner’s investment firm — to expand cellular coverage in urban areas by tapping into unused satellite spectrum on the ground. The proposal, approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year, has created 100 megawatts of new wireless spectrum.

The Singhs also were early investors in XM Satellite Radio. XM has quickly become one of Raj’s favorite pastimes because it allows him to listen to Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and other rock singers rarely heard on traditional FM radio.

Neera, now 47, stepped back from the business in the 1990s to raise the couple’s two sons. One will attend the University of Pennsylvania in September. Neera manages the family’s personal investment portfolio.

Despite their wealth, the Singhs remain grounded in a way one might not expect from billionaires. The family enjoys traveling and skiing in Vail, Colo., but they could hardly be considered jetsetters. With two teenage boys in high school, the couple doesn’t want to travel and leave them home alone. "We are stuck,"says Neera, "We are very simple people,"she adds. "We have plenty of help, but if I have to clean my house and if I have to cook my food and if I have to clean my toilet, I can do so."

Wealth has allowed the Singhs to support pet projects, primarily in education. They help fund programs for women in India as well as scholarships at the University of Maine, where Raj studied, and Johns Hopkins University, where Raj serves on the board of trustees. "There was no way we could have afforded an education here if we hadn’t gotten scholarships,"says Neera. They’ve also given money to start the telecommunications program at Marymount College in Arlington.

Though she is the daughter of an upper-middle-class college administrator, scholarships were Neera’s route to the Indian Institute of Technology. That’s where she met Raj in 1977. He was on break from the University of Maine and knocked on her door to borrow a pencil and paper. How ironic that just a few years later their decision to abandon these rudimentary tools would lead to cellular wealth beyond their wildest dreams.