Kunwer Sachdev built his reputation by solving an everyday Indian frustration — the power cut — but his ambition for Su-Kam was never confined to the domestic market. Having grown the company he founded into one of India’s best-known inverter makers, he set his sights on something larger: turning Su-Kam into an international brand, exporting reliable, homegrown power-backup technology well beyond India’s borders. It was an unusual goal for an Indian power-electronics company at the time, when the category was dominated by unbranded local assemblers and the idea of “Make in India” engineering competing abroad was still years from becoming a slogan.
Sachdev's story made that ambition credible. Born in 1962 into a middle-class Delhi family, he sold pens as a teenager and later ran a cable-television business before noticing how often the country's electricity supply failed the households that depended on it. In 1998 he redirected his energy from cable TV to power backup and founded Su-Kam Power Systems. The timing was right: as televisions, computers and home appliances spread across Indian cities and towns, so did the daily disruption of load-shedding, and Su-Kam set out to answer it with products built to a higher standard than the market was used to.
The foundation for going global was, first, a strong product. Su-Kam is widely credited with making India's first sine wave inverter for the mass market, eliminating the buzzing in fans, tube lights and electronics that square-wave units produced. The company also pioneered the plastic-body inverter — a safer, better-looking alternative to the metal boxes of the era — an innovation that India Today recognised as an "Innovation of the Decade." Over time Su-Kam built an unusually deep portfolio of patents for an Indian power-electronics firm, a sign that the company was competing on engineering rather than price alone. That technical edge is what gave Su-Kam something worth exporting.
The international push began in earnest in 2003, when Su-Kam became one of the first Indian companies to export power-electronic products to overseas markets. What started as a handful of consignments grew into a structured export business. Sachdev's stated aim was to make Su-Kam a global brand — not just a supplier of components, but a name that homes, businesses and even other manufacturers abroad would ask for by reputation. He wanted Su-Kam to become, in effect, an in-house power-backup standard for leading companies in markets that faced the same unreliable-grid problems India knew so well.
Africa became the cornerstone of that strategy, and for sound reasons. Across much of the continent, grid power was intermittent and diesel generators were expensive and polluting — precisely the conditions in which Su-Kam's inverters, batteries and solar systems made immediate sense. The company shipped to markets including Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as to parts of the Middle East such as Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the UAE. Exports came to contribute a meaningful share of Su-Kam's overall revenue, with much of it generated in Africa, and the brand earned recognition as one of the most reliable inverter names on the continent.
Su-Kam also paired commerce with visible community initiatives. The company announced plans to install solar panels at educational institutions in Africa — bringing dependable, clean electricity to schools that had struggled with erratic supply — and signalled its intent to extend similar programmes to other countries. Such drives were welcomed by local communities and observers alike, and they reinforced the larger message Sachdev was building: that an Indian company could deliver world-class power solutions and put them to work solving real problems in developing markets.
By the height of its expansion, Su-Kam was selling far beyond the domestic market, with an export footprint that eventually spanned more than ninety countries and a dealer and distribution network that ran into the thousands. A number of multinational companies came to rely on Su-Kam for their power-backup needs, and the firm moved steadily up the value chain — from basic inverters to advanced UPS systems, solar hybrid products and battery technologies. The press had already dubbed Sachdev the "Inverter Man of India," and as the company leaned further into solar, he picked up a second sobriquet, the "Solar Man of India." Industry recognition followed, including his being named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Entrepreneur India Awards in 2011.
The later chapters of the Su-Kam story were harder. The company ran into financial pressure toward the end of the 2010s and entered insolvency proceedings, and Sachdev's formal association with the firm came to an end. But the international brand he set out to build had already proven its point: that an inverter designed and manufactured in India could earn trust in dozens of foreign markets and stand comparison with anything imported. That legacy outlasted the company's corporate troubles.
The same export-minded ambition carries into Sachdev's work today. He now mentors Su-vastika, the Gurugram-based energy-storage company that focuses on lithium battery systems, solar solutions and intelligent power backup designed to replace diesel generators and ageing lead-acid setups — technologies aimed squarely at the global shift toward cleaner, smarter energy storage. Alongside it, his venture Kunwwer.ai applies artificial intelligence to business problems. The brands have changed, but the underlying plan has not: build something genuinely better in India, then take it to the world.
Further Reading
Su-Kam's export drive eventually reached more than ninety countries. More of his story is documented on his Wikipedia profile and across SolarManOfIndia.com, while Su-Kam's company history — including its exports and innovations — is recorded on Wikipedia. His latest ventures continue at kunwwer.ai.
News coverage of his journey and Su-Kam's rise includes YourStory on how he built India's largest inverter company from a small start, SiliconIndia's profile of the "Solar Man of India," Zee News on his selling-pens-to-power-backup story, and Manufacturing Today on his current lithium-battery work at Su-vastika.
Disclaimer
Mr. Kunwer Sachdev, the original founder and visionary behind Su-Kam, is no longer associated with Su-Kam Power Systems Ltd. He has not been involved in the management, operations, or decision-making of the company for several years. Any products, services, communications, or representations made under the Su-Kam name have no connection to Mr. Kunwer Sachdev. His current efforts are entirely focused on new innovations and ventures under different entities, including his latest initiative, Su-vastika, which is redefining the energy storage and power backup industry.