New Delhi: Seven years ago, Geeta Sachdev was livid when her husband Kunwer splurged most of their Rs25 lakh savings on a 20GHz spectrum analyser. They had been looking for a house to buy at the time.28th October 2009
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Power-backed Su-Kam gains in strength
New Delhi: Seven years ago. Gee to Sachdev was livid when her husband Kunwer splurged most of their Rs25 Latch savings on a 20GHz spectrum analyser. They had been looking for a house to buy at the time. Kunwer Sachdev laughs at the memory today. ‘You know how wives are, Ensconced in a mansion in Gurgaon along with their two sons. he can afford to be sanguine about the 2002 expense. After all, Su-Kam Power Systems Ltd. is the power backup specialist company that he started in 1998. has grown into an enterprise that expects Rs500 crore in revenue in the year to March—Sachdev lounges casually in his Gurgaon office in a T-shirt and bermudas on a Monday afternoon. ‘I’ve taken a sabbatical from day-to-day operations. which in any case are on auto-pilot,’ he says. The hiatus from 16-hour workdays was also prompted by health concerns that surfaced about a year and a half ago. prompting him to bring in a professional at the helm of affairs—chief executive officer Venkat Rajara man. It’s not as if he is hiding away his time in the office. Sachdev is indulging his passion for history by reading up on Stalin. Mao and even Hitler. playing squash. learning to play the piano and putting the finishing touches to Su-Sake, a forthcoming patisserie venture which is still in the laboratory stage. The young company caught the fancy of large investors in December 2005. with Reliance Capital Ltd and Temasek Holdings Pie Ltd., Singapore’s government-owned investment company, together picking up an 18% stake in Su-Kam for Rs45 crore. The public will gel a chance to own a piece of the business, with Sachdev planning an initial public offering sometime next year.
Fa the fiscal year. the company expects to achieve an output of one million inverters. Export revenues. too. are expected to see a 25% nse to Rs100 crore this yea from Rs80 crate in 2008-09.
Su-Kam has moved beyond its bread-and-butter business of inverters for domestic use. The share of revenues from power backups for homes has been steadily declining in any case. It will drop to 40% this year from 55% last fiscal. while industrial inverters and exports wit make up 30% each. Compared with 20% and 25%, respectively, for the same period. The product range *so includes solar-based backup systems, power storage facilities and LED (light-emitting diode) Lighting ‘We have started three plot projects in solar-powered LED lighting—in Nepal. Nigeria and Malaysia,’ says Sachdev. Power storage devices were a natural corollary. he adds. as the company readies for as entry into automotive battens in the current fiscal.
An admitted straggler during his academic years, Sachdev started off his career by assisting his brother in the business of selling pens; when he looked enough for his elder sibling to open a shop in Old Delhi’s Nal Sadak area 1, he wasn’t satisfied with just retailing other brands. I wanted to create a brand of my owl while my brother was more conservative and didn1 want to lose a good thing.’ he recounts. The name Su-Kam was created dung a college canteen that will Mends.
After Sachdev opted out of the family business to branch out on his own. he dabbled in various commercial pursuits. including with a law firm and a cable T equipment manufacturing company. The latter eventually led to his moment of epiphany in 1992 when he established his own business manufacturing disl antennae. amplifiers and splitters.
‘Towards the end of the 1990s. locally assembled inverters had appeared on the scene,’ he says. In fact. I had purchased one for my home for which I needed th. services of a local mechanic almost on a daily basis.’ Exasperated. he took matters into his own hands, buoyed by his expertise in the electronics equipment industry. The void that he saw on peering into his inverter convinced him that there was a crying need for a branded product in the inverter segment that was large and unorganized. ‘By that time. I had made money from my cable TV business and so. with a seed capital of Rs10.000.I set up my first inverter manufacturing unit, Sachdev recalls. The strategy was simple—take a look at all the inverters in the market and design his own. That was the lime when his Rs22 lakh spectrum analyser. which measures and analyses electrical waves. Came in handy.
It wasn’t a smooth ride, though: quality issues kept cropping up whenever the company came out with a new product. ‘The first year. we sold 100 units.’ he says. Product innovation. he says. was crucial to constantly up the ante against the competition. ‘We have filed for more than 50 technology patents so far.’ he points out. Today. with six plants running to capacity—lour in Bad& Himachal Pradesh, and two in Gurgaon on the outskirts of Now Delhi —Su-Karn’s client list includes Tat. Teleservices Ltd and Vodafone Essar Ltd, which use its inverters as power backups for their cell phone towers, besides the Ethan group’s EasyDay outlets ‘I Jagadhan near Ambala in Haryana. and Dwarka and Pitampura in New Delhi
