A man who turns every problem into an opportunity — the story of Su-Kam’s founder, as told in a business-school case study.
In its “Success Alley” column, The Financial Express profiled Kunwer Sachdev, founder and managing director of Su-Kam, as a great example of an entrepreneur who turns every problem into an opportunity through sheer creative talent. The piece, drawn from a management case study, is one of the earliest national write-ups to treat him as a textbook innovator.
From selling pens to a Rs 500 crore company
The clipping sketches an unlikely beginning. A graduate in Physics and the son of a railway clerk, Sachdev started his working life selling ballpoint pens in Delhi. By the time the article was written, he owned a company worth around Rs 500 crore — a leap the piece attributes not to luck but to a habit of looking at ordinary situations and seeing an opening others missed.
Spotting the cable-TV opportunity, then the inverter
The article traces how, working across both cable-TV and other trades, Sachdev noticed something different in the way people used and struggled with power. He moved into inverters, and set about making units that could actually work across India’s different seasons and conditions — adding features such as remote controls that the largely unorganised market had never bothered with.
A great example of one who turns every problem into an opportunity.— The Financial Express, “Success Alley”
An innovation-led leader
By 2010 Su-Kam was the leading power-backup solution provider in India, with a consistent focus on technological innovation. The Financial Express notes that the company had attained heights unheard of in a largely unorganised industry — setting new benchmarks, upgrading standards, and investing in product innovation, design sensibility and a strong distribution network. Sachdev had already filed more than fifty patents, and Su-Kam products even offered remote-diagnostic features so an inverter’s performance could be assessed from the company’s Gurgaon office.
Recognised by the best
What lends the profile weight is its provenance. The write-up is an excerpt from Managers Who Make a Difference, a book on management skills by Prof. T.V. Rao of IIM Ahmedabad, and it recalls that management thinker C.K. Prahalad had, a few years earlier, singled out Sachdev as a great example of Indian innovation. For a founder who began by selling pens, being written up in a management text alongside such names was its own kind of milestone.
Why it still matters
Read today, the 2010 feature captures Su-Kam at the height of its influence and Sachdev at his most quotable: hard work and commitment coupled with creativity and a genuine penchant for innovation, in service of millions of people who relied on his power-backup systems. It is a reminder that long before the “Inverter Man of India” label became common, the business schools had already noticed him.