28th February 2006
| KUNWER SACHDEV, 40 |
| Education : Statistics (Hons), Hindu College Worked with : A telecom company Last salaried job : Rs 8,000 a month Age at starting business : 23 years No. of years as entrepreneur : 17 years Initial investment : Rs 10,000 Sources of fund : Personal savings Company : Su-kam Power Systems, manufacturers of power protection devices Turnover : Rs 200 crore in 2005-6 No of employees : 1,000 |
Who would look twice at the guy who came to fix the cable for your new TV? Do you think that he had a great career prospect? But this cable guy, who had just left a sales executive job, had stars in his eyes. Stars that would eventually light up millions of homes during the inevitable power failures. And from working the pliers in apartment after apartment in Delhi, he now sits comfortably at the helm of one of the biggest inverter manufacturing companies in the country, Su-kam.
But Kunwer Sachdev, the erstwhile cable guy, is not as comfortable as you think. “I am very excited about this new technology I discovered at the GITEX fair in 2006. In business, you have to upgrade constantly. If you want to move forward, you can’t stagnate.” Sachdev would know. Creating a Rs 200-crore company from Zilch with no formal training in engineering or management is no mean achievement. He didn’t even start with inverters but with cabling equipment. And it isn’t as if Lady Luck pursued him. It took Sachdev a patient 17 years to set up this enterprise. It now has a 20% equity stake from Reliance India Power Fund, a private equity fund sponsored jointly by Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings.
For a graduate in statistics to become a “business technologist” is undoubtedly an unusual leap. “But business was always on my mind. All through college, I thought of nothing else,” confesses Sachdev. It may be that his father’s repeated failures, a railway clerk, to start his own business silently motivated the son to accomplish what his father couldn’t. “One lesson I learnt from my father’s failure was that career and business don’t go together. You have to sacrifice one for the other,” says Sachdev. And failure has been the cornerstone of every success that he has known. During college, he helped his elder brother establish a pen business. But they fell out, and Sachdev was on his own. The sales executive’s job with a telecom company followed. In 1987, he married Gita, his junior at Delhi’s Hindu College, amidst parental opposition. Sachdev moved to a rented
house. Gita’s teaching job in a school came in handy.
What Sachdev learnt about the telecom company stoked his business instincts. By 1989, he was ready to start a cable TV business with the help of a techie from the same company. An investment of Rs 10,000 was enough to get the system going. But while Sachdev quit his job, the techie refused, and for a while, the father’s story of failure became the son’s. Sachdev did not give up hope.
The going became tougher as it was now a one-man show—human resources, finance, technology, etc. “To get the work going, I took up small assignments of cabling work for multi-storeyed buildings and hotels with two workers,” says Sachdev, who managed these odd jobs with the advance payments from clients.
Sachdev’sTips for Aspiring Start-ups
I
BE HONEST WITH CUSTOMERS If your product is faulty, replace it; that is the best way to win over the customer
REINVEST IN YOUR BUSINESS Instead of investing in real estate or stocks. Sachdev reinvests in his business
INVEST IN EMPLOYEES Su-kom organises annual get-togethers for employees
QUICK DECISIONS Sochdev is known for his ”lightning speed-decision-making skill
ni THINK AHEAD Don’t gloat over your achievements. Plan your next move
conked off for the nth time. Frustrated. he decided to take it apart himself to identify the Koh Wm. He saw not a firmed product but an immense business pi ACM int in 0% of the consumer, something superior. The idea was Isom Swink, which” was quick to cash in in II. After intensive studies of folio mud and using a new (helot technology, he started manufacturing inverters at his factory, Rut Nail. es VII here. Destiny did not play it straight. The products
were n disaster, and all 1110 IDs were returned to the buyers. Sot la be bowed Mom by yet another failure Sachdev got a few pops- front the fledgling FPS industry and focused On technological innovation. He manufactured Inverters using a more advanced technology testing std rt•testing them for failures. The capacity was just enough to manufacture PIO inverters it nu nth, but the response for the refined Owen-ors was stupendous. In the white-used market, his products stood out. In 2000. Sachdev decided to close down his profitable business of cable TV products and set up his first big factory in Gurgaon at it east of FL, W lakh. His quest to continuously upgrade his products using new techno4m4es made him a clear market leader. His success was validated when headlights Ftelffince and Temasek paid lb 15 mires for AL 204. stake in the company Stielvdm. Is now looking at other futuristic areas such as solar photovoltaic systems. Wind energy systems. hybrid systems and invert-urs of over 100 loll capacity. Its sit-more factory will manufacture SW batteries and will operate in April 2007. Time to go puffin.? Maybe, he says. For it, man. who took up a few insurance policies only because the agents wer• persistent, Matters of personal finance do not rank rallwr high on his priority table. ‘I %count rather nsinvirt in liusitaws than puniuts• pop-wily hark up the shirk market or Militia’ fund..” he says. Perhaps a house In Gurvion. lanais alse. 21 offices. throe Mehl.- ries and 1.11011 employee!.. are C1101101 for Swhdev to t• uncon-cerned with pits. mud finance
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