Self-made Indian-American millionaire blazed his own trail, now helps others

FOX 2 - From NASA to the NASDAQ one man from Michigan is documenting the lessons he's learned as he blazed trails and created opportunities for himself when others turned him away.

The backstory:

Kanwal Rekhi is called "The Ground Breaker", an entrepreneur from India who, at 80 years old, has published a book talking about his unlikely road to success and why he wants to help others do the same thing.

"I was the first Indian American CEO and first Indian American to take (a venture-backed company) public on NASDAQ," he said.

He was a pioneer in the computer industry before the word was even a household name.

"I realized that somebody will have to network these machines," he said.

Rekhi is living proof of the American dream — one that started at a young age in Bombay, India.

After graduating college, Rekhiset his sights on moving to America. In 1967, he enrolled in Michigan Tech to pursue a master's degree in engineering.

In 1969, he found a job in a promising new technology of computers.

"Right after man was put on the moon, I left Michigan a week later," he said.

He was then laid off seven months into the job. So he found a new one in Florida.

"Supplying computers to NASA," Rekhi said. "Except that NASA had no plans beyond the moon landing and they were not buying computers anymore."

Eventually he made his way to Silicon Valley and found steady work.

"I was doing the flight simulators for the US Air Force and US Navy," he said.

Steady, yes, but the glass ceiling for an Indian-American was very apparent.

"The Indians were not seen as managerial material," he said.

So after nine years, he took a bet on himself and founded a company called Excelan.

"There was no network, let alone the internet," he said. "So we were the pioneer in computer networking."

Five years later, he made history taking his company public on the New York Stock Exchange.

"My journey was a very lonely journey, and there were no mentors and there was no role models, nobody I could talk to, nobody believed in me," Rekhi said.

Now it was time to give back, he co-founded an organization called TiE, which stands for The Indus Entrepreneurs, Indus being a river that runs through India.

"I started out initially to solve the problems that I had, people didn't have faith in us," he said.

And that's where he found a different definition of success.

"I have mentored over 10,000 entrepreneurs, I have invested in over 200 companies," he said.

Retired but far from finished, the 80-year-old self-made millionaire took the lessons he learned, humility, leadership, and embracing change, and wrote a book called "The Ground Breaker." Principles built on a simple message.

"If you don't think you're good enough to do it, but if you think you are any good, you have to prove it," Rekhi said.

The "Ground Breaker," comes out on February 23rd. You can pre-order the book right now online at Amazon or wherever you get your books.