Three of My People Who Built Their Own Company — Arun Bhardwaj, Rajnish Sharma & Ravi Dutt

People of Su-Kam — #5

When Su-Kam People Build Their Own Company

This post in the series is different from the others. The previous stories were about individuals — one person, one journey, one chapter. This one is about three people. Three people who worked at Su-Kam, in different departments, with different strengths and different relationships with me. And who, after leaving, came together to build something of their own.

Smarten Power Systems was co-founded by Arun Bhardwaj, Rajnish Sharma, and Ravi Dutt — all three of whom spent significant years at Su-Kam. When I look at what they have built, I feel something that is not quite pride and not quite surprise. It is more like recognition. Of course they built something. They had the training. They had the experience. And clearly, they had the vision to put it all together.

Let me tell you about each of them.

“Three people, three different departments, one company they built together. When I look at Smarten, I feel something like recognition — of course they built something. They had the training.”

Arun Bhardwaj — From Service to the World

Arun came to me through the reference of a close friend from Haryana — one of those introductions that you agree to as a courtesy and then realise, fairly quickly, that the person in front of you is worth a lot more than the favour that brought them in.

We put him in the service department first. Service is where you learn the product from the inside — not from a spec sheet, but from what actually goes wrong, what customers complain about, what needs to be fixed at midnight in a city you have never been to before. It is unglamorous work. But it builds a kind of understanding that no classroom and no sales pitch can replicate.

Arun did that work well. And then we shifted him to the export department — and that is where he found his calling.

He became part of Dhananjay Sharma’s international team and began travelling. Africa, the Middle East, across markets where Su-Kam was building its global presence. And he was very good at it. Nigeria, in particular, stands out in my memory — he did an excellent job there, building relationships, managing the market, representing Su-Kam with the sincerity that was always his defining quality.

I remember meeting him in different countries — markets he was looking after, places where he was the face of Su-Kam on the ground. He was never loud about it. Arun is not a talkative person. He is a sincere one. And in international markets, where trust is everything and words are cheap, sincerity is the currency that matters most.

He rose from service to international sales entirely on the strength of his work. Nobody gave him a shortcut. He earned every step.

“Arun is not a talkative person. He is a sincere one. And in international markets, where trust is everything and words are cheap, sincerity is the currency that matters most.”

Rajnish Sharma — The R&D Man Who Learned to Speak the Market’s Language

Rajnish is one of the most unusual people I have come across in this industry — and I mean that as the highest compliment.

He joined Su-Kam as a technician in the R&D department. In most companies, and in most careers, that is where the story ends — or rather, where it stays. R&D people work on the product. Sales people talk to the market. The two worlds rarely mix, and the people who live in them rarely cross over.

But Rajnish was different from the beginning. He was a fast learner — faster than most people I have seen — and more importantly, he was always ready for something new. That openness, that lack of ego about what he already knew versus what he still had to learn, is the rarest quality in a technical person.

I made a decision to groom him personally. I started taking him to the markets — dealer meets, demonstrations, field visits. Things that R&D engineers almost never do and, frankly, often do not want to do. Rajnish not only accepted it, he absorbed it. He learned how to talk in a room full of dealers. He learned how to explain a product’s technical qualities in the language of a businessman who does not care about circuits but cares very much about margins and reliability.

What made this investment pay off was something I had not fully predicted — he brought the market back into the lab. Because he was going to the field and hearing directly from dealers and distributors what was working and what was not, he came back with feedback that was specific, actionable, and real. He improved products based on what he saw and heard himself. Not through reports. Not through filters. Directly.

So I built something around that. I created a special team whose job was to go into the field and train dealers and distributors — not just sell to them, but genuinely build their capability to sell and service Su-Kam products. I made Rajnish the head of that team. And from that point, there was no looking back for him.

“He brought the market back into the lab. He improved products based on what he saw and heard himself — not through reports, not through filters. Directly. That combination is extraordinarily rare.”

[PHOTO_RAJNISH]

Ravi Dutt — The Quiet Man in the Lab

Ravi Dutt was a quiet person — focused, a little stubborn in the way that good engineers sometimes are, with a deep conviction about how things should be done technically. He was primarily based in R&D, working on PCB design and the kind of detailed hardware work that holds an inverter company together at its technical core, even if it is not always visible from the outside.

He worked closely with Sanjeev Saini, who led Su-Kam’s core R&D team — and my direct interaction with Ravi was more limited than with Arun or Rajnish. But a company like Su-Kam is not built only through the people who are constantly visible. It is also built by the people in the background who make the technology work, who get the PCB right, who solve the problems that nobody writes about.

Ravi was one of those people. And the fact that he is now a co-founder of Smarten — overseeing R&D and Purchase at the company he helped build — tells me that what he learned at Su-Kam, and what he was always capable of, found its full expression when he had the freedom to build something of his own.

What They Built Together

Smarten Power Systems is based in Haryana and has grown into a recognised name in India’s inverter and solar industry. They manufacture solar inverters, hybrid inverters, lithium batteries, and UPS systems — products that sit squarely in the space that Su-Kam helped define. The company has won national recognition, including the National Export Excellence Award 2025.

What strikes me about Smarten is how clearly you can see the different strengths of its founders in how the company is built — Arun’s international orientation and market relationships, Rajnish’s unique combination of R&D depth and commercial understanding, Ravi’s technical foundation in product design. Three people who came from different parts of Su-Kam, who learned different things, and who have put those pieces together into one company.

What This Means to Me

I have always believed that a company’s greatest product is the people it develops. Machines depreciate. Technology becomes obsolete. But a person who has been given real responsibility, real challenge, and real opportunity to grow — that investment compounds for decades.

Arun, Rajnish, and Ravi spent years at Su-Kam. They worked hard. They grew. And then they took everything they had built inside themselves and used it to build something of their own. That is not a loss to Su-Kam’s legacy — it is an extension of it.

Every inverter that Smarten puts in the field carries, somewhere in its DNA, the years those three spent learning the business at Su-Kam. I gave them their first chance in this industry. They took it and ran with it — all the way to building their own company.

I respect that enormously.

Core story tags #PeopleOfSuKam #ArunBhardwaj #RajnishSharma #RaviDutt #SmartenPowerSystems #KunwerSachdev #SuKam

Industry #SolarInverter #SolarIndia #RenewableEnergy #HybridInverter #CleanEnergy #EnergyStorage #PowerElectronics #MadeInIndia

Entrepreneurship #Entrepreneurship #StartupIndia #Founders #BuildingIndia #InverterIndustry #PowerIndustry

Recognition #ExportExcellence #NationalExportAward #GlobalIndia #MakeInIndia

Career & growth #CareerGrowth #Mentorship #Leadership #TalentDevelopment #RDInnovation

Also read: Jagdeep Chauhan — The Man Who Invented India’s Sine Wave Inverter  | 
Venkat Rajaraman — The Man Who Left Nvidia for a Dream  | 
Narender Singh Negi — The Man Always Lost in His Thoughts  | 
Sunil Badesra — The Boy Who Became a Leader