October 2017, India International Science Festival, Anna University Chennai: Kunwer Sachdev’s keynote on why every power-industry player has one job — change the market before it changes you.
In October 2017, Kunwer Sachdev, then Managing Director of Su-Kam Power Systems, took the stage at the India International Science Festival at Anna University, Chennai. His talk was compact and pointed. The mantra: change the market before it changes you — and the concrete example was where Su-Kam had already put its money: IoT and AI inside power products.
The mantra: change the market first
Sachdev’s argument to the IISF audience was that the power industry has no choice about disruption — only about who does it. If you do not shape the next product category yourself, someone else will do it around you, and you will spend the rest of your business life defending share. So build the next thing while the old thing is still profitable.
IoT + AI baked into the inverter
The tangible piece he took to the festival: Su-Kam had already integrated IoT and AI into its power solutions, letting users monitor and control their inverters, batteries and solar systems from a mobile app. Not a demo, not a roadmap slide — a shipping capability, in a category that had spent 20 years selling essentially the same product.
“Change the market before it changes you.”— Kunwer Sachdev, MD, Su-Kam • India International Science Festival, Chennai (Oct 2017)
Why the line still runs Su-Kam — and now Su-vastika
Read against Sachdev’s trajectory since — pushing into lithium storage, cell-level battery testers, retrofit modules to make old inverters solar-ready and lithium-ready — the 2017 line looks less like a keynote soundbite and more like the operating philosophy of the whole company. Change the market. Every time.
Change the market before it changes you — Saur Energy (coverage of IISF Chennai talk) →