My E-Rickshaw Dream: The Su-Kam Electric Motor I Built in India & Exported to America

The e-rickshaw was one of the projects closest to my heart at Su-Kam. Long before these vehicles became a common sight on Indian roads, I was convinced they would change the way the country moved — and I wanted them built in India, by Indians.

We set up the work in our R&D wing, almost like a secret laboratory. I spent hours there with my engineers, going through the motor, the driver card and the solar integration in detail, and just as many hours testing the prototypes myself — driving them, pushing them to their limits. When a motor ran just right, or when the solar panels stretched the range further than we expected, I knew we were onto something.

For me this was never just an e-rickshaw. It was about an India that was self-reliant and powered by its own ingenuity. I was determined that we would not depend on Chinese imports for something we were perfectly capable of building ourselves.

That conviction is what led me to Mr. Deepak Singh, a US citizen I met in the USA through a common friend. I was struck by the work he was doing there — he was making high-power DC motors, supplying them to an American company for tractors and other high power-rating applications, some of it tied to confidential US defence projects. When I shared my idea of developing an e-rickshaw motor for India, he agreed to set up a small R&D unit and plant right inside our own premises, and he came to India himself to inaugurate it. It was a truly generous gesture on his part, and remarkably, it all came together within six months of signing the deal.

Deepak told me that the very motors he was making in the USA — for tractors and those other high-power applications — would now also be made here in India. Much of his work was secretive, so even I was never given the full details. But what mattered to me was bigger than the details: the factory came up on our premises, and before long we were exporting these India-made motors to the USA. For a company like ours to be sending high-power motors from India to America was, in my eyes, a genuine milestone for the country. (Reference: Permanent Magnet Generators, India.)

And then it all began to unravel. When Su-Kam entered insolvency and the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process began, it became a harrowing time for Deepak. There was constant friction between him and the Resolution Professional, and through those long months he was steadily losing his business back in the USA. He flew down to India twice, in person, to try and set things right — but it took well over a year to resolve, and by then he had lost all his orders. Our partnership, which had achieved so much in so little time, suffered badly. He was deeply upset about how things had turned out on the Indian side, and I could only watch, helpless to undo what was happening.

Today e-rickshaws are everywhere, yet their motors and driver cards are still largely imported. Had Su-Kam’s journey not been cut short, those components would have been made on Indian soil. That remains one of my biggest regrets — not only for the dream that went unrealised, but for a friend and partner who believed in India and was let down by how things unfolded here.

But I have never stopped believing in the idea, or in the people who can build it. I continue that same pursuit of indigenous, future-ready technology through Su-vastika and my other ventures today — because the conviction behind that e-rickshaw, that India can and should build its own future, has never left me.