Gurmeet Naroola wrote a book called The Entrepreneurial Connection: East Meets West in the Silicon Valley, and did a chapter on me. With permission from Gurmeet, you can read it below:

Kanwal Rekhi is Chairman of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs). He is a leading entrepreneur and angel investor, and is on a mission to build bridges with India.

Rekhi founded Excelan in 1982. When Excelan merged with Novell in 1989 he joined Novell’s board of directors and was later named executive vice president and CTO. Now retired, Rekhi serves on several public and private company boards. In 1986 he was named as “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Arthur-Young Venture magazine.

In 2002, I was made an honorary citizen of Houston by the mayor and given a key to the city during my visit to launch their TiE chapter.

I also spoke at Rice university on entrepreneurship and the Q&A lasted more than two hours.

Forbes did an article about me, titled “The Venture Capitalist from Kanpur” in their July 6, 1998 issue. Read below for the full text, or click here.

In 1985, Excelan was in big trouble. The board had fired my co-founder and the CEO. I was just made interim CEO and the board was looking for a permanent CEO.