The Su-Kam founder Private Passion column for The Economic Times — on golf, squash, yoga, dancing till morning, Jim Collins and Chinese food.
The Economic Times “Fitness First” column carried a first-person “Private Passion” piece by Kunwer Sachdev, CEO of Su-Kam Power Systems — a warmer, off-duty version of the founder India business press usually met behind an inverter or an interview desk. The premise: living in the space age with mobile phones, laptops and data cards, he had needed a deliberate way to slow down and give his own passions the same seriousness he gave the company.
Healthy mind, healthy body
His governing belief, Sachdev writes, is the old one: a healthy mind rests in a healthy body. Sport was the way he kept both alive. He was drawn to physical activity by nature, and treated indulging in favourite activities as an extension of professional life — drawing inspiration to excel at work from excelling at his favourite sport.
Golf, swimming, squash — and yoga
Three sports carried the load: golf, swimming and squash. Golf was the newest addition; he took to learning it later than the others and found it “enhanced my concentration levels” and made real friends among fellow players — a genuine networking opportunity as much as a game. Swimming and squash he called highly energising and satisfying. And yoga, practised alongside, gave him the mind-and-body coordination the other three did not.
“A healthy mind rests in a healthy body — I draw inspiration to excel at work by excelling at my favourite sport.”— Kunwer Sachdev, CEO, Su-Kam Power Systems • The Economic Times, Fitness First column, 3 June 2007
Dancing with the Su-Kami-ans
The other release, on the days he was not on a court or a course, was music. Sachdev writes about being on the dance floor with his family and his “Su-Kami-ans” at office events — the DJ at their regular events knew his favourites and cued them up when he came on. His taste ran wide: old melodies to today catchy numbers, mood-dependent. Dancing into the wee hours, he says, was its own way of unwinding.
Books on the road — history and management
Travel gave him reading time, and he made the most of it. Two books he singles out in the column: Good to Great by Jim Collins and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid by Prof. C. K. Prahalad. His approach, in his own words: read the book, then evolve his own version of the ideas — management writing as raw material for operating decisions, not as a stack of takeaways to memorise.
Family, food and Chinese as the default
The piece closes on family. Maintaining balance between professional and family life mattered enough that he made it a point to take his family out for dinner regardless of how busy work got. A self-declared foodie, any occasion became an excuse to eat out — and his favourite was Chinese. It is a very Sachdev column: technical seriousness at work, playful release outside it, no pretence.
Fitness First — The Economic Times →