Startup Master Class
Learn · Inspire · Build
Say: “Good afternoon. I am not here to sell you a business plan template. I am here to tell you what I did with Rs 10,000 — and what I did before I ever saw investor money.”
Today’s road map
Say: “First — the order: sales and marketing, then team, then funds. Then I will walk you through real stories — dhaba boards, YouTube, Facebook, Walmart — each with a blog you can read tonight.”
What most students get wrong
Big idea → chase crores → hire team → marketing last
Say: “If you cannot sell one unit yourself, no investor cheque will save you. They fund traction — not a slide that says TAM is $50 billion.”
Sales first · Team second · Funds third
Sell yourself first
Repeat what worked
After proof
Say: “Reliance-Temasek gave us Rs 45 crore — but only after six factories, exports, and a brand India already knew. Not before my first sale.”
Small proof beats a big idea
Say: “For the kids in this room: master sales and marketing first. It is not a department — it is the first skill of a founder. Open the product. Show the protection circuit. Let the customer decide.”
Rs 10,000 → first branded inverter
Say: “I sold the first 500 myself. Telecallers on Yellow Pages. Cable-TV dealers. I opened the case in front of every customer — that was the brand.”
Inverter vs generator — create a category
Say: “India ran on generators. We did not compete on price alone — we told the market there is a new category: silent backup for the home. That is category creation.”
Chic — inverter as consumer brand
Say: “We put plastic on an inverter when everyone said metal only. India Today later called it Innovation of the Decade. Product design is marketing.”
Commercializing solar — not just demos
Say: “Everyone else showed solar in exhibitions. We sold it. Affordable solar for ordinary homes — that is sales and marketing, not lab pride.”
Solar Man of India — mission as brand
Say: “Green energy for every Indian was not a CSR line — it was the story dealers repeated when they sold. Mission and margin can be the same sentence.”
Dhaba boards — grassroots brand
Say: “We sent our people to highway dhabas with a SU-KAM board and a T-shirt for the owner. Vodafone copied that playbook years later. Zero ad agency.”
Kashmiri shikaras — floating billboards
Say: “After a dealer meet in Srinagar I stepped into a shikara. The torn tripal told me more than any sales chart. We turned boats into brand — with a human face.”
Sales Ka Bazigar — find sales talent
Say: “I made a TV show to find reps no MBA was producing. Dealer meetings included wives and children — a happy family makes a loyal partner.”
Power On Wheels — demo van
Say: “If the customer will not come to the lab, take the lab to the customer. Fans spinning during a real outage — that closes the sale.”
Building the marketing team
Say: “Step two in the right order: once I could sell, I hired people who could repeat it — proof compilers, video creators, community operators. Not before.”
YouTube — video over hoardings
Say: “In 2009 my management team said video was unnecessary. I started YouTube anyway. Microtek joined YouTube in 2019 — ten years late.”
First inverter company on YouTube
Say: “They called me a marketing guru. I was just filming truth — installations, technology, the solar future I believed was coming.”
Facebook — 143,000 solar family
Say: “Three months after YouTube we opened Facebook. 143,000 members — not bought likes. Every proud installer posted a site photo.”
Facebook — 70 countries connected
Say: “Facebook became our nervous system — Lagos, Dubai, Kabul. One post from Nigeria answered a service question in Gurgaon.”
Export stories in Facebook posts
Say: “The export archive is still on Facebook — dealer wins in Gabon, stories from markets India forgot. Marketing and export were the same feed.”
India Today Top 10 Innovations
Say: “Press followed product truth. Chic plastic body beside Tata Nano on India Today — because the market already knew the story.”
India Today 2017 — going manufacturer
Say: “December 2017 — India Today on Su-Kam as a going manufacturer. A year later CIRP began. Brand outlasts balance sheets in public memory.”
Walmart Easyday — enterprise proof
Say: “Wal-Mart does not buy stories. They buy uptime. We kept Easyday stores running — that case study opened other retail doors.”
Solar projects — marketing proof
Say: “Every installation photo was marketing. Malawi, Assam Rifles, border posts — proof you could not fake in a pitch deck.”
Technovations 2012 — brand deck
Say: “Our marketing team compiled every award, project, product into decks. Technovations is the archive — evidence assembly, not adjectives.”
Nigeria — export dealer story
Say: “I found Srinivas Pilla in Nigeria. Export is not a container — it is a person who trusts your brand on another continent.”
Marriott Chandigarh 2011 — 70 slides
Say: “By 2011 I had seventy slides of proof — products, exports, awards. Speakership works only after you can sell in silence.”
TiE years — speakership brand
Say: “India had no electronics story. TiE wanted someone who had sold before he spoke. Your voice is a distribution channel — step five, not step one.”
Public speaking — first 30 seconds
Say: “If you do not grab the audience in thirty seconds, you have lost them. Same rule as sales — open the case immediately.”
Five lessons — say this before Q&A
All 24 essays — scan or bookmark
Say: “Every story today is on my blog — click any part tonight. Start at the hub if you forget the order.”
Questions?
Say: “Innovate. Collaborate. Succeed. And remember — learn to sell before you learn to pitch.”
kunwersachdev.com/building-su-kam-sales-marketing-series/
