The Man I Found in Nigeria — My Story with Srinivas Pilla

I Did Not Find Him in India

Most of the people in this series came to Su-Kam through the usual routes — campus placements, referrals, the normal flow of hiring in the industry. Srinivas Pilla was different. I found him in Nigeria.

When Su-Kam was building its Africa business, we were looking for someone on the ground who understood the Nigerian market — its rhythms, its people, its way of doing business. Srinivas was working with a white goods company there at the time, in consumer durables, nothing to do with inverters or solar. But I could see the qualities that mattered: intelligence, hunger, and the kind of adaptability that a market like Nigeria demands of everyone who works in it.

I made him an offer to head Su-Kam’s Nigeria operations. He said yes. And that was the beginning.

“I found him in Nigeria — working in white goods, with no background in inverters or solar. But the qualities that matter most in a market like Nigeria were all there.”

 

Building a Subsidiary from the Ground Up

This was not just a sales posting. We went on to open a 100% subsidiary in Nigeria — Su-Kam’s own company, on the ground, in one of Africa’s largest and most complex markets. Srinivas was at the helm of that. And since he was not from the inverter and solar industry, he would come to India regularly for training — learning the technology, the products, the thinking behind what we were building.

Those training visits became a rhythm. He would absorb everything, go back to Lagos, apply it, come back with questions from the field, and refine his understanding further. It was a real education — one built not from a classroom but from the back-and-forth between factory and market.

As a person, Srinivas was exactly the kind of man you want representing your company abroad. Sincere. Hard-working. Not someone who needed managing — someone who took ownership and got things done. His family reflected the same values: a wife who was equally hard-working, children whose education was the family’s priority, a middle-class groundedness that kept him focused on what mattered.

The Battery Argument I Am Glad He Lost

The most memorable chapter of my time with Srinivas is one we disagreed on — strongly, for a while — before the facts proved me right. I am not telling this story to say “I told you so.” I am telling it because it led to something that changed the entire market.

At the time, Su-Kam Nigeria was selling VRLA (Valve Regulated Lead Acid) batteries — sealed batteries, white-labelled from China, requiring no water topping. They were convenient. But their lifespan was short.

I wanted Srinivas to switch to Tubular batteries — the kind being manufactured in India. Tubular batteries require water topping, yes, but their lifespan is four times longer than VRLA. My logic was straightforward: Africa is a price-sensitive market, just as India was. People cannot afford to keep replacing batteries. What succeeds in India on value and longevity will succeed in Africa too.

Srinivas pushed back. He was not wrong to be cautious — the Nigerian market was used to sealed batteries, and the maintenance requirement was a genuine objection. But I held my ground.

When the First Batteries Failed — and What We Did About It

The first shipment of tubular batteries from India did not go well. The early samples arrived filled with acid and water — which was the norm for Indian distribution at the time, where batteries are sold ready to use. But shipping fully charged, acid-filled batteries across continents was a different matter entirely. At that time, the HAAS (Hazardous Articles in Stores and Stowage) container regulations were not yet standardised for this kind of export. The batteries failed on arrival. Srinivas, understandably, pointed to those failures.

But instead of abandoning the idea, we solved the problem. We developed a method and system to ship the batteries dry — without acid — and fill and test them at the destination in Nigeria. It required training the local team, setting up the right equipment, and building a reliable process from scratch. It was not simple. But it worked.

“Instead of abandoning the idea, we solved the problem — shipping batteries dry and filling them at destination. It was not simple. But it worked. And what started as a tussle between us became a system that India now uses to export tubular batteries across all of Africa and the Middle East.”

Srinivas launched those tubular batteries in Nigeria. They succeeded. And that system — ship dry, fill and test at destination — became the standard method for exporting tubular batteries from India to Africa and the Middle East. Today, Indian tubular batteries are sold across the continent using exactly this approach. What started as an argument between two people about one market became something much larger.

From Su-Kam to Stanford to His Own Company

Srinivas worked at Su-Kam Power Systems from November 2010 to January 2015 — four and a half years building our Nigerian operations from the ground up. After Su-Kam, he went on to study at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business — one of the most prestigious business schools in the world.

And then he did what the best of Su-Kam’s alumni do: he built something of his own. Today he is the Founder & CEO of African Power Ventures and Energy Ltd., based in Lagos — his own renewable energy company, selling inverters, batteries, and solar solutions in the Nigerian market. The man I hired to sell Su-Kam products in Nigeria is now running his own power brand in that same market.

That is not competition. That is success.

What Nigeria Taught Both of Us

The Nigeria chapter of Su-Kam’s story is one I think about often. It was one of the most ambitious things we attempted — going into a market that complex, that large, that different from India, and building a fully-owned subsidiary from nothing. It worked because the right person was on the ground.

And the battery tussle — which felt like a disagreement at the time — turned out to be one of the most consequential decisions we made together. The system we built to ship and commission tubular batteries in Africa did not just serve Su-Kam. It opened a door for the entire Indian battery manufacturing industry. That is the kind of outcome that happens when you push through a difficult problem instead of walking away from it.

Srinivas Pilla pushed back, which was his right. But he also followed through, which was his character.

Also read: Jagdeep Chauhan — The Man Who Invented India’s Sine Wave Inverter  | 
Venkat Rajaraman — The Man Who Left Nvidia for a Dream  | 
Sunil Badesra — The Boy Who Became a Leader