Kanwal was the first Silicon Valley Indo-American Founder & CEO to take a venture-backed company public on the NASDAQ (Excelan: NASDAQ). In the 1990’s Kanwal became high profile Venture Angel while co-founding and leading TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) into the largest global mentoring network for Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and around the world. Kanwal has co-invested and worked with John for 20 years and they founded Inventus in 2007 to institutionalize their high-conviction early stage approach to help Founders build category defining companies. Kanwal was also the first investor behind Manu, Raju and BV as they founded and built several successful startups in Silicon Valley.
Kanwal is currently on the Boards of Dresma, Monetize360, Orbion, and Out of the Blue. He led the investments or was on the Boards of Poshmark (IPO: NASDAQ), StatX (ACQ: TapClicks), Sierra Atlantic (ACQ: Hitachi), Intellivision (ACQ: Nortek), GenWi (ACQ: Persistent Systems), Espresso Logic (ACQ: CA Technologies) and actively mentored the Founders of redBus( ACQ: Naspers IBIBO).
Kanwal earned 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 the IIT-Bombay and Michigan Tech.
-
TiE is the world’s largest entrepreneurship network in the world with 13,000 members and 3200 charter members in 58 chapters across 12 countries. Since its inception, in 1992, TiE members have generated over $1 trillion of wealth through their entrepreneurial endeavours. TiE’s sole mandate is to foster entrepreneurship and help its members create wealth through entrepreneurism. TiE Canada has three chapters – TiE Ottawa, TiE Toronto and TiE Vancouver.
Started in 2002, TiE Ottawa is celebrating its 20th anniversary. TiE Ottawa fosters entrepreneurship by providing a platform for networking, mentorship, global connectivity, entrepreneurship training and funding to Canadian entrepreneurs. Join the TiE Ottawa at ottawa.tie.org.