Kunwer Sachdev started Su-Kam in 1988 — not with inverters, but with cable television on Delhi rooftops. Amplifiers for the new cable men, dish systems at Mandi House and the Prime Minister’s residence — years the associate did not witness firsthand. The inverter chapter began a decade later, in 1998, when a technician told him he would not understand how his own home inverter worked. He took the box to the factory and opened it.
What followed — India’s first MOSFET single-battery design, the plastic-body Chic that won India Today’s Innovation of the Decade, the Home UPS category he named and the industry copied, seventy-seven patents, Government of India recognition for in-house R&D, exports to ninety countries — is the arc the press has covered, broadly, more than once. Then NCLT. Then Su-Vastika, and the quieter rebuilding.
Magazines have profiled him. Television has interviewed him. They tell the comeback story — the patents, the products, the collapse, the rebuild. That record exists. It is not what I came here to add.
Why I write this
I joined Mr Sachdev around 2000 — when Su-Kam was already deep in inverter work, improving the early square-wave design while the cable-TV business was being shut for good. Everyone in the office called him Sir. I was in the room for much of what follows: the hiring at Nangal Raya, the R&D fights, dealer-meet theatre, service territories handed to engineers as businesses, the exhibitions, the collapse, and the quieter rebuilding.
My personality was shaped because of him. My thought process was shaped because of him. That is not rhetoric — it is why I can act like a CEO today and think like one. Today I run a solar EPC and project company with 200-plus people. That career did not happen in spite of those years; it happened because of them.
Mr Sachdev lost everything. And still he is the strongest personality I have ever come across. There is no one in my life like him. I respect him from the core of my heart.
What he built for India, in my honest view, deserved the highest respect the country can give — a Padma-level honour, or something at that scale, for what he did for Indian households and Indian manufacturing. I am not claiming he was nominated or considered for any specific award. I am saying what I felt: the country owed him that kind of recognition.
Instead came CBI scrutiny, ED investigations, court cases — the Su-Kam era carried that weight in the public record, and it sat with me. I do not write this as legal commentary or accusation. I write it as what I watched from the outside: a man I deeply respected, who had already lost everything, facing investigations and courts on top of it.
That made me wonder — and the wondering never quite left. How does someone who changed how Indian homes run on backup power, who built an industry category from scratch, end up here? The contrast stayed with me.
That respect, that influence, and that wondering together led me to start this site — and the channel behind it. Not to add another heroic profile. To write down the person behind the products: how his brain worked, how he spoke to people, what the culture felt like from inside. A grateful portrait, but an honest one — including the shortcomings.
What this site is
Stories about Kunwer Sachdev the person — how his brain worked, how he spoke to people, what his work culture felt like from inside, and the limited glimpses of personal life I was allowed to see. Products and company milestones are background detail, not the subject.
The magazines captured the arc. They rarely captured the man — Sir testing an engineer’s waveform at midnight, arguing with a customs officer in Hong Kong, staying visibly silent when the room needed a yes. I write those moments down. Observational, not promotional. Warm but not gossipy. The kind of record that does not normally get written about Indian founders, because the people who could write it usually do not.
How to read this site
- The Story — the legacy itself, grouped by era. The chapters that build the picture.
- News — the press archive: media coverage and external articles, chronologically.
- Contact — to write to me: support@invertermanofindia.com.