Kunwer Sachdev own first-person account for SiliconIndia — from selling pens with his brother to coining the “Su-Kam” brand, and from a broken home inverter to a Rs 500-crore company.
Kunwer Sachdev own bylined account in SiliconIndia is the closest thing to a first-person origin story of Su-Kam — written by the founder in his own voice, at a point when the company was crossing Rs 500 crore in turnover and Reliance and Temasek had already bought in.
A father who wanted to be an entrepreneur
Sachdev opens on family. His father worked in the railways but always wanted to be an entrepreneur; the family even moved to a residential colony full of business owners to be close to that ambition. His father tried many businesses but never did well financially. What survived, Sachdev writes, was the work ethic — all three sons carry it. Getting a shoe or a shirt on a birthday, as a kid, was “a big thing.”
Hindu College and the pens business
He credits Hindu College with a personality-changing leap: he learned to talk to people, to organise, to take groups along. He did his BA in Mathematical Statistics at Delhi University while helping his brother sell pens. It is here, in 1984, that he coined the name “Su-Kam” — for the pens — wanting to turn it into a brand.
“Knowledge for the sake of knowledge is foolish, but it is a way forward.”— Kunwer Sachdev, SiliconIndia • February 2011
Cable TV, and Physics textbooks for grown-ups
After marriage brought stability, Sachdev launched a cable-TV business without any technical background, and set about closing the gap the hard way — pulling out his class 9 and 10 Physics textbooks to actually understand the wiring. By 1996-97 he had a factory with 50 employees. That is where the money came from, and where the money went — straight back into the business.
1998 — peering inside a broken inverter
The pivot happened in 1998. His own home inverter kept failing. When the mechanic opened it up, Sachdev — who understood PCBs from cable TV — saw immediately that it was built on sub-standard boards. He bought a high-quality branded inverter and asked his factory workers to strip it apart and study it. After many rounds of experimentation, Su-Kam first inverter shipped — and did not rock the market. So they kept improvising, until the sales finally started picking up.
Marketing an inverter like a consumer brand
What separated Su-Kam from the pack, in Sachdev telling, was the decision to treat an inverter like a consumer brand. Su-Kam launched an ad campaign — a first for the category — and used a very grassroots trick: putting under-utilised employees on the road to install “SU-KAM” boards outside dhabas across India, persuading owners with a T-shirt in exchange (the same playbook Vodafone and Airtel would use). By 2002 the brand was in a strong position; 2003 brought the country first sine-wave inverter, the first plastic-body inverter, and a UPS range.
Reliance, Temasek and a scorching pace
The first patent came in 2004. That year turnover crossed Rs 100 crore. By the time SiliconIndia piece was published in early 2011, turnover was touching Rs 500 crore — of which Rs 80 crore came from exports. Around 2007 there were buyout offers, but Sachdev instead accepted a private-equity investment: the Reliance India Power Fund — a JV between Reliance ADAG and Temasek Holdings Singapore — put in Rs 45 crore. In 2006 Su-Kam opened its first offshore office in Dubai, became the world second company to manufacture a 100 kVA inverter, inaugurated India first SMF battery plant, and picked up a US trademark to prepare for exports there.
A company built on invention
Sachdev closes on innovation. Su-Kam Gurgaon R&D team — 32 engineers — was, in his phrase, “keep inventing.” The company had filed 50 technology patents by then, and was adding roughly two per month. His dreams, he tells the SiliconIndia reader, are big enough that even if he works another 50 years and the next generation inherits them, they will not be finished. Decisions, he writes, are not right or wrong — only the outcomes are, and the founder job is to keep making them, driven by passion rather than by the numbers.
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