This is a story I want to tell properly because it gets glossed over in most coverage of Su-Kam.
In the mid-2000s, the rest of the manufacturing world was busy figuring out how to compete with Chinese imports. Indian electronics companies in particular were defending their home market against the flood of cheaper Chinese goods. Su-Kam decided to do the opposite — we worked to export Indian inverters into China.
The conventional wisdom said it could not be done. China was the factory of the world. Power backup was their category to lose, not ours to win. But we were convinced that India had built something genuinely better in the inverter space, and the only way to know was to show up and put our products in front of Chinese buyers ourselves.
We travelled to exhibitions in China and Hong Kong — long flights, heavy sample boxes, and conversations in a language we did not speak. We were the only Indian inverter brand on those exhibition floors. The Chinese distributors were curious. They had been selling to India for years. They had to be persuaded to import from India.
The Economic Times eventually carried a one-line headline — “Su-Kam to export inverters to China” — and for most readers that was the end of the story. For us, it was the conclusion of two years of effort and a small but real demonstration that Indian engineering could compete on the world’s hardest factory floor.
Originally reported by The Economic Times. Read the source: economictimes.indiatimes.com