In the year 1967, a young engineer left India for America with an IIT Bombay degree and eight dollars in his pocket.
His name was Kanwal Rekhi.
He had graduated from IIT Bombay with a degree in Electrical Engineering and was about to begin a new chapter in a country whose technology industry was only beginning to take its modern shape. There was little in his luggage that suggested what would follow.
Rekhi went on to Michigan Technological University, where he completed a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1969. Like many engineers who arrived in America in those years, he began his working life as an employee.
It did not proceed smoothly.
Rekhi has himself recalled that he was laid off from his first three jobs. Yet those disappointments did not end his career. They became part of the education that preceded his entry into business.
FROM ENGINEER TO FOUNDER
The decisive change came in 1982.
That year, Rekhi founded Excelan, a company working in network technology. The personal computer and networking industries were still young, but the need to connect machines was becoming increasingly important.
Excelan developed networking products and, in 1987, became a publicly traded company in the United States.
Two years later, Excelan merged with Novell. Rekhi subsequently joined Novell’s board and became its executive vice-president and chief technology officer.
The engineer who had once been dismissed from three jobs had now helped take a company from its early days to the public market.
Rekhi later described himself as the first Indian-American founder to take a venture-capital-backed company public.
A SECOND CAREER
The sale of Excelan did not mark the end of his work. It changed its nature.
Rekhi gradually moved from building one company to helping build many.
His career came to include entrepreneurship, venture capital and mentoring. His investments and associations included companies such as Exodus Communications and Poshmark, which became public companies, and redBus, Sierra Atlantic and NetMagic, which were acquired.
Financial Express reported in 2026, citing an interview with Rekhi, that businesses connected with his entrepreneurial and investment career were worth more than $75 billion, while describing him as an investor with $9.9 billion in assets.
The numbers, however, tell only part of the story.
LOOKING BACK TO INDIA
In 1993, Rekhi returned to Mumbai for the first time since leaving IIT Bombay.
He visited the Powai campus where he had studied as a young man. What he saw troubled him. The condition of the institution’s infrastructure was different from what he remembered.
The visit became a turning point.
Rekhi began supporting IIT Bombay and later became a major donor to the institute. He also became involved with the IIT Bombay Heritage Fund in the United States and founded the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology.
His connection with India was not confined to philanthropy.
BUILD A BRIDGE
Rekhi became one of the figures associated with the growth of India’s technology and entrepreneurship networks.
He was a co-founder of The Indus Entrepreneurs, or TiE, an organisation created to connect entrepreneurs, investors and professionals. Under his leadership, its presence grew in Indian cities including Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi.
He later became co-founder and managing director of Inventus Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm.
By then, his role had changed once more. He was no longer merely building companies. He was helping other people build theirs.
Rekhi says he has mentored more than 10,000 entrepreneurs and invested in more than 200 early-stage teams.
His philosophy is simple: тАЬYou cannot bet on technology and you cannot bet on market, but you can bet on a person.тАЭ
THE LONG ROAD
There was another difficulty he had to overcome.
Rekhi has spoken publicly about a speech impediment that had affected him since childhood. Over time, he worked through it and became a public speaker, addressing entrepreneurs and young professionals.
His career thus passed through several stations: engineer, employee, founder, public-company executive, investor and mentor.
The journey began in 1967 with an engineering degree and eight dollars.
It led him to Silicon Valley, to the public markets, to venture capital and, eventually, back toward the country from which he had departed.
His story is therefore not merely one of wealth. It is the story of a man who changed occupations as circumstances changed, learned from reverses, built a company, invested in others and eventually used some of what he had gained to strengthen the institutions and networks around him.
In his own words: тАЬAim for the stars. Shoot higher than you think you can.тАЭ
For Kanwal Rekhi, the journey from eight dollars to billions was not made in one great leap. It was made in stages, each following the other, across nearly six decades.
– Ends
