A customer’s daughter got shocked by a metal inverter. That incident led Kunwer Sachdev to create India’s first plastic-body inverter — the CHIC — which India Today called ‘Innovation of the Decade’. This is also the story of the Fairy Queen, an inverter shaped like a locomotive engine that tragically failed because of one small packaging mistake.
In 1998, a rude service technician told Kunwer Sachdev he wouldn’t understand inverter technology. That insult sparked two years of R&D, exploding MOSFETs, and the birth of India’s first MOSFET-based single-battery inverter. Featuring original photos of the first Su-Kam inverter, the Times of India ‘Digital Wonders’ article, and the R&D lab where it all happened.
Everyone knows Kunwer Sachdev as the Inverter Man of India. But Su-Kam started in 1988 with Cable TV systems — manufacturing CATV amplifiers, installing dish antennas for Doordarshan and the Indian Air Force, and distributing Echostar satellite receivers. This is the untold origin story, with original photographs from the archives.
The untold story of how Su-Kam Power Systems solved the biggest problem with transformer-based Online UPS systems — their massive power consumption. In 2015, we integrated an MPPT solar charge controller that bypasses the main charger, making the double-conversion Online UPS energy efficient without sacrificing the galvanic isolation Indian power conditions demand. Includes real R&D thermal test data and 84.28% efficiency results.
Su-Kam launched India’s first YouTube channel for an inverter company in August 2009 — years before digital video became standard for B2C brands. Kunwer Sachdev on why he went on camera, what he wanted every Indian to understand about energy, and how the whole industry followed within two years.
Su-Kam built its Baddi factory in Himachal Pradesh and used it to develop India’s first tubular gel battery — a product that changed how inverter batteries performed in extreme heat. Kunwer Sachdev on the engineering decisions, the factory story, and why Baddi became Su-Kam’s most important manufacturing site.
In 2017 Su-Kam shipped the first grid-feed hybrid inverter ever built and patented in India. By 2024 China holds 40% of India’s inverter imports and 46% of the utility-scale market. The story of how we got there, and what India lost.
Su-Kam’s Brainy S let any customer buy a UPS today and add solar to it months or years later, without replacing the inverter. The real marvel was the charge-sharing protocol — solar gives maximum, grid fills the gap, automatically, transparently.
Inverter Man of India Kunwer Sachdev explains how UPS charger design, ATC, six-stage charging and waveform quality silently decide your battery life and electricity bill.
Dr Kushant Uppal & Intellizon: The Engineering Mind Behind Su-Kam’s Lithium Solar Street Lights Kunwer Sachdev Founder of Su-Kam and