Kanwal Rekhi is one of the pioneering Indians in Silicon Valley, the first Indian CEO to take a company public on the US Stock Exchange.
Rekhi founded and built The IndUS Entrepreneurs, or TIE, into the largest and most influential network of Indian entrepreneurs, spurring the startup and business ecosystem in India over the years. His book, ‘The Groundbreaker’, was recently published by HarperCollins India.
US-based Rekhi spoke to THE WEEK on his dream of a million entrepreneurial flowers blooming in the country, and what India needs to do. Here are the excerpts:
Q: How was it like being an Indian in America in the 60s and 70s, before communication modes like the internet and the larger influx?
The distance was that much bigger. I left India in 1967, and I didn’t return for six years. But there was nothing there at the time (no Indian movies, music or a larger diaspora). And a phone call or even travel to India was very expensive.
But there were no jobs in India—maybe you can do a job as a management trainee with DCM in Delhi or Tata, but there were no proper technical jobs. And the US at that time had fallen behind in the space race to the Soviet Union, and they needed engineers. And they were calling for engineers, for talented people to come, get an education and work at the same time.
Q: After all these years, your connection with India has been strong...
Not true. For the first 27 years, I had no connection with India. Eventually, my mother, all my brothers, all moved to America. So, I had no family connection with India left. And, but, but India stayed with you. And I started to travel (back), and yeah, I got pulled in.
Till 1991, India was stuck. Then things turned around, and (I thought) maybe it’s time to engage. And that became TiE (The Ind-US Entrepreneurs) thinking, ‘Can we turn India into an entrepreneurial country rather than a socialist run country?’
We started around 1998-’99, held seminars, spoke to policymakers, went to Universities, and soon we saw the impact.
Q: After working with Indian entrepreneurs over the last 25 years, did you see a perceptible change in their approach, attitude, confidence?
The difference is day and night. After the Narasimha Rao government, the Vajpayee government was phenomenal, very receptive to ideas.
Just to give you an example, on the day the telecom policy changed in India in 2001, there were one million mobile phones, and there were 17 million landlines. And a year later, there were 83 million mobile phones and 17 million landlines.
And it has revolutionised India, right? You wouldn’t have the UPI and all of it if we didn’t have the phone, right? Changes are happening. The same thing is happening at the entrepreneurial level.
So India is not stuck; it's not going down the desert. 200,000 startups, a hundred and whatever number of unicorns, you see the IPOs, the new developments, the jobs being produced, you have a $300 billion IT industry.
It's a phenomenal change. Can we do more? The answer is absolutely yes. Why do we only have 200,000 entrepreneurs in a country of 1.4 billion people? Why can’t we have 1 per cent of the population become entrepreneurial?
Q: You think the scope is way more?
Way more. In the US, 2 per cent of the population is entrepreneurial.
Q: But our consumption is not the same. We have very few people with that kind of spending power...
There are a very large number of smart people in India, working for foreign companies, GCCs, in the IT sector. How do we convert them from being an employee into becoming an employer?
This is self-perpetuating. As you succeed, it draws more people in, it draws more capital in. I think the Indians are as smart as Americans, or maybe even smarter. The opportunity in India is better.
It’s partly government policy, partly the mindset that we are trying to change, right? But change is happening. Why do we have only a handful of Indians (becoming entrepreneurs), why not a million Indians?
Q: So what is stopping them?
No mother says, beta, entrepreneur bano (go become a businessman)!
She says, get a job. The middle class values are (all about) becoming an engineer, doctor, being disciplined and responsible. They used to say, oh, nobody will give their daughter in marriage to a guy who doesn't have a stable job with a good income, right?
So, we're looking at social change, mindset change, that has to happen. And that happens very slowly. But it's happening.
Q: What is the way forward?
We have India, we have Bharat. One modern, scientific and confident. The other is stuck in the mud, not confident, and poor.
We need to invest in them. Why do we have only 23 IITs producing 5,000-6,000 engineers a year? In a country of one billion, why can’t we have 100 or 1,000 IITs?
Without that, you don’t have the manpower. That’s what China did: ensure everyone got a quality education.
Also, tax laws need to change, maybe incentivise massive entrepreneurship in Tier III or villages with tax breaks. Make venture capital more available. We should have an environment where these things sprout up on their own. Get rid of this socialist mindset of the government trying to control and decide everything.
You cannot have this India-Bharat divide and last forever. If one leg is healthy and the other leg is weak, you are weak. So you need to focus on the leg which is weak.