The story of Su-Kam Solar in 2018. Solar was still a luxury. Every big Indian brand was reselling Chinese inverters with a fresh sticker. And the Chinese manufacturers were entering India directly. This is what we chose to do about it — and why I wrote about it in The Economic Times.
The Start-Up Summit was delayed by heavy rains. Some of us reached early, some were stuck. And in that unplanned green-room conversation, a thought I had lived by inside Su-Kam for 25 years quietly became a keynote — the one ET EnergyWorld would cover the next morning.
I went to IIM Ahmedabad in March 2017 to deliver the ‘Power-Up with Kunwer Sachdev’ keynote at TiECON. The bigger discovery came in a quiet conversation with the professors before the talk — my Su-Kam story was already being taught to their MBA students. Here’s what that reframed for me.
Nine published books — IIMA, HarperCollins, Springer, Rashmi Bansal, Harsh Pamnani, Disha, ProjectX Digest — have profiled Kunwer Sachdev and Su-Kam Power Systems. Here are the covers, the references, and what each one captured.
From Dataquest 1999 to HarperCollins, Springer and IIMA — nine published books and multiple India Today Group editions have documented Kunwer Sachdev and Su-Kam Power Systems as part of India’s innovation record.
A consolidated reference page of published books — academic, business, and educational — in which Kunwer Sachdev, founder of Su-Kam Power Systems, is profiled or cited as a notable Indian entrepreneur and innovator.
T V Rao’s IIMA book ‘Managers Who Make A Difference’ (Random House India, 2010) profiles Kunwer Sachdev as a leader who turns every problem into a business opportunity — built on C K Prahalad’s 2007 identification of Su-Kam as a great example of Indian Innovations.
India Today’s landmark August 2010 Independence Day issue named Su-Kam’s plastic-body inverter among India’s Top 10 Innovations of the Decade — a defining recognition of Kunwer Sachdev’s leadership in reimagining home power backup for millions of Indian households.
From dealers in Lagos and Kabul to solar villages in Gabon and Rwanda, Su-Kam took Made-in-India power to 90+ countries. Kunwer Sachdev on the export journey and why an Indian brand standing on the world stage mattered.
Before Indian businesses used Facebook, Kunwer Sachdev turned it into Su-Kam’s nervous system — connecting factories, R&D and service teams across 70+ countries. The story of an early bet, what was lost, and keeping the heritage alive.