JESSE SINGH IS AN ENTREPRENEUR IN THE
purest sense of the word. He arrived in the U.S. in
1986 after six years of working as a design engineer
for several companies in India. But his career path
was far from typical for an Indian engineer in
America. “When you are in India you see a different picture of
the U.S.,” says Singh. “You think money is on the trees.You get
photos from your friends and family with cars and nice houses
and you think it’s easy to make money. But when you come
here the reality of life is totally different.”

That reality, for Singh, meant working 16-hour workdays
in various minimum-wage jobs to survive. He arrived in the
U.S. on a marriage visa, without any real prospects. He
worked in gas stations, delivered pizzas, and worked as a
machine operator at a time when the minimum-wage was a
paltry $2.75 an hour. He had to leave his son with his sister in
Canada because he didn’t have the means to support him.

But by the end of 1986, Singh had gradually improved his
financial situation, earning over $1000 dollars each month. He
could pay his rent, and rather than seek further stability, he
started exploring the possibility of doing business back home
in India. He wrote to friends and former colleagues in an
attempt to seek out opportunities. Having previously worked
at an automobile manufacturing company, Singh sensed an
import/export opportunity for auto parts, given that parts in
India often came from overseas. But he didn’t have the initial
capital to enter the market. He diligently explored other trade
opportunities, like those in the garment business. And as he
was looking for a window of opportunity, he heard from a
friend who was working in purchasing at an Indian company—
as it turned out, his friend was buying semiconductor chips
from San Jose.

Living in Silicon Valley, Singh was perfectly placed. “He
said,‘you are there, why don’t you buy from there and ship to
me?’” Singh remembers. “‘I’ll tell you where to buy, how
much to pay.’” And with that—a first order for a mere $90 in
December 1986—Singh got his entrepreneurial start in the
U.S. The company he now heads—BJS Electronics—has
grown into an operation garnering $300 million in annual
revenues. Singh’s office is now located in a 45,000 square foot
facility in Milpitas, CA, in the heart of Silicon Valley. His
workplace is a far cry from the apartment dining room table in
Santa Clara where he started out. Singh has now long since
given up the simple import/export game with India—
pointing out that profits started to get squeezed by excessive
competition in the early 1990s—but it was enough to get his
foot in the door.

“You have to work hard. But, on the other hand, the U.S.
is the best place to live because you have dignified labor and
you are paid for your hard work,” says Singh. “Venturing into
business opportunities was basically a hit-or-miss process to
see what might work besides getting a regular job.”

Supply and Demand

In the early 1990s, BJS’ business ballooned and Singh was
making thousands in profits each day.The company evolved in
distinct stages, beginning as an import/export middle man,
then transforming into a simple distributor that brought in
inventory in order to satisfy customer orders, and finally
expanding into a full-fledged stocking distributor.

Singh’s core business remains speculating on inventories of
computer memory products from around the world, buying,
customizing, and then re-selling those inventories to various
original equipment manufacturer (OEM) customers. BJS has a
specialty division that deals exclusively in distribution to large
OEM customers like IBM, HP, Dell, Cisco, and many others.
He has some customers that buy from him day in and day out,
but it’s a business that remains vulnerable to the fluctuations of
the market.

“We buy mostly excess inventories from all over the world
and stock them. Then we resell. Sometimes we lose money,
sometimes we make money. As long as you make money more
times than you lose it you are ahead of the game,” says Singh
with a good-natured laugh. The recent downturn in the
technology industry hasn’t really seemed to faze Singh. As
someone who built his career on whatever opportunities
presented themselves, he is still eagerly eyeing business
opportunities in a variety of sectors.

The BJS Group now has a software division exclusively
devoted to software implementation. But perhaps Singh’s
most daring project is his recent acquisition of optical
switching startup, Lambda Optics. Despite the meltdown in
the networking and communication sectors, Singh has made a
bet on Lambda Optics’ all-optical switching technology.
“There is dark fiber all over,” Says Singh. “But only two percent
of the fiber laid so far is being used.” BJS bought Lambda
Optics when it was in the final stages of R&D and now,
according to Singh, the product is ready for market. For now,
troubled giant JDS Uniphase dominates the optical product
market, but Singh thinks Lambda Optics’ offering is
technically superior to what currently exists on the market.

Singh sees particularly fertile ground in emerging markets
like that of China, or even India, where a great deal of fiber is
being deployed. Beijing, for instance, vies to become a “digital
city” by the 2008 Olympic Games (which will be held there)
through massive fiber deployments. It promises to be a
challenging market to crack, but its obvious business potential
was clearly irresistible to Singh, who consistently exhibits a
flare for the next profitable opportunity.

Life Beyond The Market

Singh has come a long way since his pizza delivery days of
1986. But Singh’s success goes well beyond merely financial
success, embodied in his sparkling white Jaguar parked under
an awning in front of BJS headquarters. Singh hosted
President Clinton at his home and met President George W.
Bush in the Oval Office after September 11, appealing for a
statement of support for the Sikh community, which had
fallen prey to a misdirected backlash—a statement which
Bush duly offered. Singh first became involved in politics
during the Gulf War, when Sikh community members were
beaten because people mistakenly thought they were from the
Middle East. Since then, he has remained active in community
issues.

Singh also became a pioneer in 1995 by hiring senior
citizens to work on the production line at BJS. He took the
risk of hiring a few seniors, after they urged him to give them
a chance. He ended up by hiring 20 senior citizens—and their
contribution was very positive for the company, according to
Singh.This startling result became a case study presented in a
speech before the U.S. Congress. Singh describes Congress’
response: “They said,‘If this guy, an immigrant, can come and
do this in ten years, then imagine the possibilities for
corporate America.’” From working minimum wage to
presidential visits and congressional speeches, Singh’s life
reads like a fairytale version of the American Dream. In tough
times like these, his unfailing optimism and his opportunistic
attitude toward new business opportunities are thoroughly
refreshing.

“I went to an engineering college to get an equivalent
computer engineering degree soon after I arrived,” Singh
remembers. “I quit after one semester. ‘I can always complete
a degree here,’ I thought.‘Let me see what I can do.’” What he
did was find a market opening and charge into it.