Inventus Capital Partners

Investment decisions are led by the three co-founding Managing Directors: Kanwal Rekhi, Samir Kumar and John Dougery. Rekhi, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded networking company Excelan before its IPO and sale to Novell, brings deep operating experience to the partnership. The trio has worked together since the firm's inception in 2007, giving the partnership unusually low GP turnover for a cross-border venture firm.

Kanwal Rekhi was a founding member and former president of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), the global network supporting Indian-origin founders. While Inventus operates independently of TiE as a fiduciary manager of LP capital, Rekhi's role in TiE's formation gives the partnership deep visibility into the Indian diaspora founder community — an origination advantage that purely institutional firms cannot easily replicate.

Inventus does not invest in consumer internet, hardware, or capital-intensive sectors such as clean-tech manufacturing. The firm has consistently avoided India's consumer-app and e-commerce races, focusing instead on enterprise software, SaaS, AI/ML infrastructure, digital health and fintech where founders sell to business buyers rather than chasing network-effect consumer plays.

The firm reserves capital for follow-on investments from each fund vintage and has demonstrated willingness to deploy across its parallel vehicles when an India-based company opens a US subsidiary — or vice versa. This cross-fund follow-on capability is uncommon among venture firms that maintain strict geographic silos and represents a structural advantage for founders pursuing dual-market strategies.