diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
index 42174c228ef3c..1b70c2d6104d7 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.21.0.txt
@@ -115,6 +115,7 @@ Other Enhancements
 - :func:`DataFrame.items` and :func:`Series.items` is now present in both Python 2 and 3 and is lazy in all cases (:issue:`13918`, :issue:`17213`)
 - :func:`Styler.where` has been implemented. It is as a convenience for :func:`Styler.applymap` and enables simple DataFrame styling on the Jupyter notebook (:issue:`17474`).
 - :func:`MultiIndex.is_monotonic_decreasing` has been implemented.  Previously returned ``False`` in all cases. (:issue:`16554`)
+- :func:`read_excel` raises ``ImportError`` with better message if ``xlrd`` is not installed. (:issue:`17613`)
 
 
 .. _whatsnew_0210.api_breaking:
diff --git a/pandas/io/excel.py b/pandas/io/excel.py
index 5db4603c37be0..faafdba435ff2 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel.py
@@ -239,12 +239,17 @@ class ExcelFile(object):
 
     def __init__(self, io, **kwds):
 
-        import xlrd  # throw an ImportError if we need to
+        err_msg = "Install xlrd >= 0.9.0 for Excel support"
 
-        ver = tuple(map(int, xlrd.__VERSION__.split(".")[:2]))
-        if ver < (0, 9):  # pragma: no cover
-            raise ImportError("pandas requires xlrd >= 0.9.0 for excel "
-                              "support, current version " + xlrd.__VERSION__)
+        try:
+            import xlrd
+        except ImportError:
+            raise ImportError(err_msg)
+        else:
+            ver = tuple(map(int, xlrd.__VERSION__.split(".")[:2]))
+            if ver < (0, 9):  # pragma: no cover
+                raise ImportError(err_msg +
+                                  ". Current version " + xlrd.__VERSION__)
 
         # could be a str, ExcelFile, Book, etc.
         self.io = io