“Give Yourself a Chance”: Kanwal Rekhi

Kanwal: I don’t want to use names. Some of the companies which had failed, they should have succeeded for sure. Success rate has been phenomenally good for me. You have to put the whole thing in philosophical terms. Generally speaking where I was not the primary investor, where I was not the board member but somebody else was a primary investor, somebody else was a board member and I supported another investor or another angel investor I did very poorly. Where I was involved more deeply I did much better.

Kamla: What about Ensim?

Kanwal: Ensim, I was not very involved in the first 4-5 years. I stepped in there at the end. That company should have succeeded. That company should have successed because they had a very powerful team and raised huge amount of money, and was in a very hot market. It turns out there was a lack of focus. One of the problems in a start up is that you have got to put some blinders on. Once you have picked your opportunities you have got to put your blinders on because the opportunities are coming to you at a very rapid clip. So you have to work at the opportunity that you have picked otherwise you start to disperse a lot of energy. Ensim could never focus on the opportunity they had which was virtualization that turned to be such a huge market. They were way ahead of VMWare and had far superior technology but they never focussed to execute well.

Kamla: What do you make about the success in the start up world? Do you think it’s a random event?

Kanwal: There is definitely a luck element. It would be foolish if we deny that one. Timing is everything. If you look at startups Apple was not the first personal computer start up, there was Altair and others. There was a timing element. But you also make your own success. Failure could be very quickly attributed to your own if you are not making the right choices and if you have not executed well. You can do everything right but if the market is not there you will fail. So there is an act of luck. I guess random is the right word. Timing has to be right. So there is a saying in our business “When the lady luck smiles at you all the sins are forgiven but when the lady luck decides to spit on your face all the hard work starts to drain.”

Kamla: You have also donated quite a bit of money to IIT Bombay (Kanwal Rekhi Center) where you studied and Michigan Tech. What are you going to be doing in this education space in terms of investing because that is a hot market in India?

Kanwal: Well giving money to IIT and to Michigan Tech was paying my societal debts so that wasn’t an investment but saying that I owe it to the society. Yes we are looking at the investment start ups in the education space as it is hot space in India specially, but we have not seen something that we liked as yet.

Kamla: My final question is a bit on a personal note. You were born in Rawalpindi and then the partition...