Sanjeev Saini and the Beginning of Su-Kam R&D
Every company that wants to build something lasting eventually reaches a moment where it must stop borrowing ideas and start creating them. For Su-Kam, that moment came in 2000. I needed someone to build our first Research and Development wing — someone with genuine technical depth who could start from nothing and create the foundation for everything that would follow.
Sanjeev Saini was working at an organisation focused on wheelchair automation at the time — niche, careful, technically demanding work, exactly the kind that tells you someone thinks about engineering from first principles. I made him an offer. He joined Su-Kam in 2001 as our first R&D engineer — the sole founding member of a department that did not yet exist.
Sanjeev Saini joined Su-Kam in 2001 as our first R&D engineer — the sole founding member of a department that did not yet exist. What he built from that beginning shaped everything that came after.
Eighteen Years of Building Together with Sanjeev Saini
What followed was eighteen years of close, intensive work that shaped the technical identity of Su-Kam. Sanjeev did not just run the R&D department — he built it. He hired the engineers, set the standards, and worked alongside me on product after product, filing patents and solving problems that no one in the Indian inverter industry had solved before.
He held an M.Tech in Instrumentation Engineering from REC Kurukshetra (now NIT Kurukshetra). Over the years, he rose from engineer to Head of R&D to Director R&D and then CTO of Su-Kam — and a formal Director of the company, a recognition of how central he had become.
Together, we filed numerous patents in power conversion, power backup, and energy storage. More than fifteen were granted. Each one was something we had worked out in the lab, argued over at the whiteboard, tested in the field, and finally reduced to an invention that was ours.
The Most Trusted Person in Su-Kam
In eighteen years, I hired a great many people. Some were brilliant. Some were hardworking. But trust is different. Trust is what you feel when someone has been alongside you through failures as well as successes — when their judgment is sound and their intentions are honest.
Sanjeev was that person for me. He was quiet by nature — shy, not in the sense of being timid, but in the sense of letting his work speak rather than his personality. The products spoke for him. The patents spoke for him. The team he built spoke for him. For nearly two decades, if something technical needed to be thought through at Su-Kam, Sanjeev was in the room.
Sanjeev was the most trusted person in Su-Kam for nearly two decades. Not because he sought that position, but because eighteen years of honest, brilliant work earned it.
When the Insolvency Came
I cannot write honestly about Sanjeev without acknowledging what happened to him through the Su-Kam insolvency proceedings. When they began, Sanjeev — like others who had held Director positions — was pulled into the legal process. He faced investigations by the CBI and ED, court proceedings, and ultimately personal insolvency. He was not the promoter. He was an engineer who had spent eighteen years building something he believed in. But the law does not always make those distinctions cleanly.
He left Su-Kam with most of the R&D team, joined Microtek for a period, and then the silence came between us.
The Silence I Could Not Break
I tried to reach him more than once. Each time his response was cold — polite in the way that hurt more than anger would have. He had simply closed the door. I stopped trying because I understood that pressing further would add to what he had already been through.
I know — I feel it — that somewhere inside him, he holds me responsible. Not because I wished it. But because he gave eighteen years to something I built, and that something brought the machinery of the state down on him. That is a hard thing to forgive, even when there is no clear person to forgive. I carry that.
What Sanjeev Saini Built After Su-Kam — Inteli Energi
Sanjeev did not stop building. Together with R. Sivarajan and Dhananjay Sharma, he co-founded Inteli Energi Technology Pvt. Ltd., based in Udyog Vihar, Gurgaon — a technology company built around R&D, product development, testing and OEM/ODM services in power electronics. Products include MPPT Solar Hybrid PCUs, Sine Wave UPS, Solar Charge Controllers, and Motor Drives. They hold patents. They do original work. The man has not changed. Only the circumstances have.
Also read: Jagdeep Chauhan | Venkat Rajaraman | Srinivas Pilla
Sanjeev — you gave eighteen years to something we built together. You built the mind of Su-Kam. What happened to you through the insolvency process was unjust, and I know it. I tried to reach you and found silence, and I have respected that silence — but I have not forgotten what you gave, or what you went through. What you are building at Inteli Energi is exactly what I would expect from you. I hope it gives you back some of what was taken.