The Day I Walked Into My Own Bankruptcy
I remember the morning I sat across from my lawyers and heard the word “insolvency” used in the same sentence as Su-Kam — the company I had spent 26 years building from nothing into India’s largest power backup brand.
I had started Su-Kam in 1998 with borrowed money and an idea that most people thought was absurd: that every Indian home deserved reliable power. By 2016, we were doing ₹1,000 crore in revenue. By 2019, I was watching the courts take it apart.
People ask me if I saw it coming. Honestly? Partially. I saw the cash crunch. I saw how regulatory changes were squeezing our margins. What I didn’t anticipate was how fast things could collapse once trust — with banks, with distributors, with employees — starts to fracture. Trust moves slow in one direction and fast in the other.
What Bankruptcy Actually Feels Like
There’s a particular loneliness that comes with watching something you built become a legal case number. Your phone still rings, but the conversations are different. People who called you for advice now call to see if they can salvage a receivable. The weight isn’t just financial — it’s deeply personal. You question everything you thought you knew about yourself as a leader.
I won’t pretend I handled it with grace. There were months I moved through in a fog. But somewhere in that fog, something clarified: the company had gone through insolvency, but I hadn’t. My knowledge, my relationships, my hunger — none of that had been liquidated. That distinction took a long time to see clearly, and it became the foundation for everything that came after.
What I’m Building Now — and Why It’s Different
Su-vastika, my current company, is in the same power backup space — but it’s leaner, more focused, and built on hard-won clarity about what actually matters. We hold patents in IoT-based Battery Management Systems because I watched firsthand what happens when hardware companies don’t innovate fast enough. Kunwwer.ai grew from the same instinct: the future of services and manufacturing will be shaped by AI, and I’d rather be building the tools than being disrupted by them.
The difference between Su-Kam Kunwer and Su-vastika Kunwer is this: I used to build for scale. Now I build for durability.
The One Piece of Advice I’d Give Every Founder
Know the difference between a business problem and a leadership problem.
Most crises that destroy companies start as business problems — a market shift, a debt structure, a regulatory change. But they become fatal when leadership mistakes speed for decisiveness, or confuses optimism with strategy.
When the numbers start telling a story you don’t want to hear, listen anyway. Get in a room with people who will tell you the truth, not people who need you to stay confident so they can stay comfortable.
I’ve learned more from the two years after Su-Kam’s collapse than from the twenty-six years I spent building it. That’s not wisdom I would have chosen — but it’s wisdom I’d never give back.
If you’re in the middle of something hard right now, I want you to know: the company failing and you failing are not the same thing.
#Entrepreneurship #FounderLife
