Kanwal Rekhi is a Venture capitalist Angel investor and entrepreneur, currently serving as the managing director at Inventus Capital Partners.
Introduction:
- Kanwal Rekhi is an Indian-American businessman.
- He was borned during British-India in 1945 at Rawalpindi (now in Pakistan), after partition they settled in Kanpur, India.
- Venture Capitalist Angel investor and Entrepreneur. Currently he is serving as M.D. at Inventus Capital Partners.
- He is credited as the first Indo-American Founder & CEO to take a venture-backed company public on the NASDAQ.
Education:
- He graduated in 1967 as an Electrical Engineer from (IIT) Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (now Mumbai).
- He acquired his Master of Science degree from Michigan Technological University.
- Further he earned his honorary doctorates in both Business and Engineering from the Michigan Technological University.
Industry Profile:
- Mr. Kanwal is experienced working in many position such as engineer, systems analyst, and manager before venturing in business.
- In 1982, heco-founded Excelan in San Jose, California at the age of 36 & was named as president in 1985. The company went public in 1987 and merged with Novell in in 1989.
- Kanwal served as an Executive Vice-President and the Chief Technology Officer of Novell until 1995.
Social and Philanthropy:
- Kanwal Rekhi co-founded TiE in 1995 The Indus Entrepreneurs, a nonprofit support network to provide advice, contacts, and funding Indian owned startups in Silicon Valley and then spread to other countries including India.
- He donated $3Million to IIT Mumbai to setup a new School of Information Technology which is now named after him: KReSIT – Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology.
- He also contributed contributed $5 million to Michigan Tech in 2000 to increase the profile of educational institutions in India.