The legendary Indian American entrepreneur, whose memoir has just been released, talks about arriving in America with $8, getting laid off three times, and building the largest mentoring network for entrepreneurs.
Long before startups and micro-VCs became the corporate norm in Silicon Valley, an immigrant from India laid a foundation that quietly helped build the Valley into a high-tech innovation hub. Meet Kanwal Rekhi—one of the most influential trailblazers in the history of American innovation.
Rekhi, managing director of Inventus Capital Partners and SV Quad and co-founder and president of The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), played a big role in jump-starting India’s startup ecosystem years before it became a global force.
He also served as the president of TiE, which has become one of the world’s largest mentoring networks for entrepreneurs.
The first Indian American founder and CEO to take a company public on the NASDAQ, he has also mentored more startup founders than perhaps any other pioneer of his generation.
Based in San Jose, California, He has mentored political leaders such as U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna and former Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Rekhi’s next goal is to create 10 million entrepreneurs by India’s 100th anniversary, he said in an interview with The American Bazaar.
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Like many great stories, Rekhi’s began unconventionally. He was born into a lower-middle-class refugee family in the aftermath of the Partition of India.
“Back in [the 1960s], I answered JFK’s call for engineers to help in America’s space race against the Soviet Union and arrived in America with $8 in my pocket and a thick accent,” he says. Rekhi admits that he was promptly underestimated. But instead he decided to turn rejection into resolve. He enrolled in a master’s program in electrical engineering.
“After getting laid off from my first three jobs, I became a daring founder and co-created Excelan—to commercialize Ethernet and TCP/IP standards,” Rekhi says. It was this networking startup that helped lay the foundation of the internet. Rekhi then went on to lead the company to a successful IPO in 1987.
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At the time, getting listed on a U.S. stock exchange was uncharted territory for an immigrant entrepreneur. Rekhi later spearheaded Excelan’s merger with Novell, becoming the first Indian American executive at a multinational corporation.
After Excelan’s IPO and merger, I realized my next chapter was enabling others to find their potential,” Rekhi says. “[Since then] I’ve mentored 10,000+ entrepreneurs and invested in more than 200 early-stage teams.” Some of Rekhi’s investments include Exodus Communications (IPO), Poshmark (IPO), redBus (acq. Ibibo Group), Sierra Atlantic (Hitachi), and NetMagic (NTT).
Rekhi, a firm believer in giving back, has also been a prolific philanthropist and helped reshape business education and entrepreneurship programs across India and the U.S.
He documents his extraordinary journey in his new memoir, “The Groundbreaker: Entrepreneurship, the American Dream, and the Rise of Modern India.”
Arriving in the United States with less than $10 in his pocket and no precedent of a success story he could relate to, what gave him the confidence that he would make it here? Rekhi says, “I had confidence that I would make it from the start. Otherwise, I would not have done it. After I was here a couple of months, I knew I was smart enough to hold my own. After the summer of 1968 in Chicago, I was sure I would survive financially for sure.”
Rekhi has been a part of Indian Americans’ ascent into technology and leadership. But as the first Indian American founder and CEO to take a company public on NASDAQ, what were the biggest obstacles he faced? He says, “The biggest obstacles on every step of the way remained the same—there was no precedent of an Indian having done it before. So, it was new ground to be broken every time.”
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But it hasn’t just been a drive to break the glass ceiling but also a vision that foresaw opportunities and innovations when others didn’t. So, when he co-created Excelan to commercialize Ethernet and TCP/IP—technologies that set the foundational stone for the internet. How did he recognize their potential when most others didn’t? He says, “As I mentioned in the book, I realized that the customers had a pain point of not being able to share data between their machines. They were not quite focused on the tech standards. TCP/IP on Ethernet provided a working solution. I was being practical.”
Rekhi’s journey will also be featured in a forthcoming documentary, “Breaking the Code,” scheduled for release in mid-2026.
As a cofounder of TiE, Rekhi has also been instrumental in shaping India’s startup ecosystem long before it became a global force. On his focus on mentorship, he says, “I remembered the loneliness I felt when I started out. I was committed to making it easier for the next generation, and mentoring turned out to be a very satisfying and lucrative activity.”
So, is the American Dream in 2026 different from what it looked like in the ‘70s? And having seen how it has evolved since he first arrived in America, Rekhi believes in the permanence of the American Dream. He says, “The American dream has not changed and will probably never change.” It’s a cracked code, he says, “Work hard, play by the rules, and bide your time!”
As for what excites him in the future? Rekhi says, “I am not excited by being a venture capitalist, though I have done well there. I like mentoring and angel investing.”