VoIP is a technology used for routing international call traffic for those who prefer to use fixed linesor mobiles over applications such as Skype. One person who was involved with a company using thistechnology as its core routing mechanism was Karan Maker.

Karan Maker studied at Mill Hill Private School before attending Manchester University andgraduating with a degree in Economics. Karan Maker had resided in the UK for the majority of hislife.

Karan Maker has always had an interest in corporate finance and management and since school hehas always taken a keen interest in analysis and strategy.

Karan Maker begun his working career while still at University. His first transaction was purchasing aflat for investment purposes in Paddington, London. He had bought the flat off plan and had sold it 6months later making a 100% profit on the invested cash in that period.

Karan Maker then partnered up with a friend from college who was from Thailand and they startedtheir first company AG Soft. AG Soft was initially begun as an application development softwarecompany. The idea was that there would be a specialised team based out of Bangkok where AGScould outsource work from European companies with regards to application development. The teamthat was developed started their works within application development doing works for large jobrecruitment sites, small telecoms companies and other e commerce websites.

Whilst developing software the team in Bangkok had come across a new technology that hadbecome 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 intodata. This data is then carried over the internet (free carry as opposed to traditional switchingmethods of using fibre optics etc) and then converted back into voice at the point of its terminationdestination (which was internally called the prison point). This technology is used for carryinginternational voice traffic. It is as if the caller is benefiting from services such as skype and onlypaying 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 oftelephony exchanges where the voice traffic to Thailand they were making available was sold. Thegrowth the company saw using this technology was immense and an offer was made by KaranMakers partner for a buy out of his shares. This offer was accepted and that funding was used tofund the capitalisation of Cypher 7 Tel 7. Cypher 7 employed the same strategy as AG Soft with twomajor differences. The first was that the traffic being sold was going to be sold to major carriers suchas British telecom, band x, Singtel, At&t etc and the other was that it if it was going to be able tohost 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 majortelecom carriers.

In 2009 Cypher 7's assets were sold through a formal process and Karan Maker then engaged in hisnext venture in private equity. This private equity fund worked with Parklane developments thatfocused on real estate developments in emerging markets with a focus on North Africa. Due to thegrowing market in North Africa and its booming property market, Karan Maker had noticed the truepotential of being able to carry out residential developments in a place where access was notaccessible to all. Tying up with Park Lane developments gave that access and allowed Karan Makerto capitalise on the real estate opportunities available in these markets.

Karan Maker also engages in charitable work and places a degree of importance on socialresponsibility.

Although Karan Maker is not linked to Voip technology anymore he does believe that there is a hugescope for this technology to develop and in time traditional