Kanwal Rekhi has actively participated in the emergence and growth of Silicon Valley and India. He applies all of his time helping entrepreneurs accomplish great results, and co-founded Inventus to devote his full energy to build a leading Indo-US venture franchise. Since 1994, Kanwal has led the first venture round in numerous early-stage companies, holding 23 board positions and actively guiding entrepreneurs to 19 exits including 6 IPOs.
Prior to his venture career, Kanwal co-founded Excelan in Silicon Valley - the first company to commercialize ethernet and TCP/IP and standardize computer networks. Kanwal took Exelan public in 1987 and became the first Indo-American Founder & CEO to list a venture-backed company on the NASDAQ. He later merged Exelan with Novell, where he was EVP, CTO and a Board Director for five years, growing the company into the second largest software company in the world. He also established Novell's operations in India, making it one of the first cross-border Indo-US technology companies.
Kanwal co-founded The IndUS Entrepreneurs (TiE) in 1992 to promote entrepreneurship among Indians and Indo-Americans around the world. He was TiE President and spear-headed it’s growth into the world's largest entrepreneurial organization with over 12,000 members who have been behind many of Silicon Valley and India's most successful start-ups. Kanwal actively advised India policy makers in the late 1990's resulting in the privatization of telecom and reforms of venture regulations encouraging fund formation in India. He was the founding limited partner of Infinity Capital-India in 2000, where Saurabh was one of the GPs, successfully backing and mentoring numerous new entrepreneurs in India.
Education
Kanwal holds a BSEE from IIT-Bombay and a MSEE and Honorary Doctorates in both Business and Engineering from Michigan Tech. He also founded the Kanwal Rekhi Schools of Information Technology at both IIT-Bombay and Michigan Tech.
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