Hindustan Times’ M Rajendran on Su-Kam’s 2007 double bet — using software to make inverters smarter, and solar to stabilise them — years before either idea became industry consensus in India.
Hindustan Times’ M Rajendran filed this piece in 2007 — a moment when both software-driven power management and rooftop solar were nascent concepts in India. Su-Kam Power Systems, under Kunwer Sachdev, was already publicly committing to both, using them as the two pillars of the next chapter of the inverter business.
Software inside the inverter
The first plank in the HT report: Su-Kam would use software for energy efficiency. That sounds obvious now — smart inverters are table stakes in 2025 — but in 2007 the category ran on discrete electronics and paper-manual settings. Sachdev’s bet was that intelligence in the box, not just size of the battery, would decide the next winner.
Solar to stabilise the inverter
The second plank was solar. Su-Kam planned to integrate solar power to stabilise inverters — a household backup unit that could get topped up by a rooftop panel instead of relying entirely on grid charging. That is the exact idea Sachdev would later formalise as the ‘solar-ready inverter’, and eventually as the retrofit charge-controller module still shipping today.
“A visionary approach that underscored Sachdev’s forward-thinking mindset years ahead of industry trends.”— M Rajendran, Hindustan Times (2007)
Why it matters in hindsight
Read from 2025, the 2007 HT report basically previews Su-Kam’s next 10 years — IoT-enabled inverters, MPPT charge controllers, hybrid on-grid/off-grid systems, and finally the solar-plus-storage push that today defines Su-vastika. The strategy Rajendran wrote about was not a marketing headline; it was a product roadmap that the company actually shipped.