After a serious train accident in 1950, he switched careers and joined the Indian Air Force as a commissioned officer in the engineering services in 1951.

He entered the Indian Air Force on 6 Oct 52, as a commissioned officer in the Technical Branch as an Aeronautical Engineer.

Initially, Raja was enrolled at the Bala Vidyalaya school in Madras (now Chennai), but then decided to move to Mysore to get services from the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing.

He started a pre-school for the hearing impaired children which he named Helen Keller Pre-school for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, after the famous deaf-blind author, activist and lecturer Helen Keller.

The school was initially started in Mysore at the first floor of Srinivasan's house in the International Year of the Handicapped in 1980.