Every brand has a beginning. But only a few have a soul.
It was a memorable day at the Su-Kam office when Harsh Pamnani — author of the insightful book Booming Brands — came to visit. He wasn’t there to write just another business story; he came looking for what makes a brand truly boom. And the answer he found lay in the journey of Mr. Kunwer Sachdev.
Harsh spent the day speaking with everyone, from the senior leaders to ground-level employees, including many who had been with the company through its most transformative years. He was eager to understand not just what the team did, but why they did it. He listened intently and asked questions that went beyond strategy and figures. He wanted to find the heartbeat of the brand.
And that heartbeat, without question, was Kunwer Sachdev.
From the moment Su-Kam began, it was never just about building products. It was about solving problems — reaching every home in India that suffered from power cuts and giving them reliable, affordable, efficient solutions. While the world still doubted India’s ability to create high-tech products, he believed, and proved, that it could.
What made this chapter different from the others was that it didn’t just look backward at the success in inverters and power backup. It looked ahead, capturing the evolution of the man and the mission — because by then, Kunwer Sachdev had already begun a new chapter: Su-Kam Solar.
While much of the world was chasing the latest tech fads, he turned toward the sun, recognising that the real future for India — especially rural India — was solar energy: clean, renewable, and India’s to harness. Su-Kam Solar was born not out of market pressure but out of vision. Rather than sit back after building one of the country’s most successful energy brands, he studied solar cells, spent hours with engineers, and reinvented the mission for a greener future — bringing the same obsession and the same late-night questions: “Let’s redesign that panel.” “Can we cut cost by improving the charge controller?” “Have we tested this in real sunlight, or just in the lab?”
That is what Harsh Pamnani captured so honestly. This was not a brand that boomed overnight. It boomed because it was built on truth, trust and tireless effort — because Kunwer Sachdev was never satisfied with “good enough.” He kept looking forward: first to empower people with electricity, and then to free them from the grid altogether.
What the Book Documented
The chapter traces a true rags-to-riches arc. Kunwer Sachdev grew up in a lower-middle-class family in Delhi’s Punjabi Bagh, the son of a railway clerk, and as a boy sold ball pens from a bicycle alongside his brother. He cleared his medical entrance exam but missed admission by a single percentage point, studied Mathematical Statistics at Hindu College with law classes in the evenings, and longed to build something of his own. In 1989 he started a cable-TV installation business with about ₹10,000 in savings, moved into manufacturing cable-TV accessories, and by 1998 had a turnover of a few crore.
The turn came from a problem at home: a locally bought inverter that failed every other day. He opened it up, found a sub-standard board and a mess of wires, studied the inverters then on the market — even importing one from Canada — and concluded the entire category was built badly. In 1998 he shut the cable-TV business to found Su-Kam Power Systems. (The book also tells the charming origin of the name “Su-Kam” — intended as “Su-Kan” from a set of initials, until a designer’s typo turned the last letter into an “m,” and, unable to afford a redo of the ₹450 logo, he simply kept it.)
What followed, the book documents, was wave after wave of innovation: India’s first MOSFET-based inverter (a quarter of the size, running on one battery instead of two), the first sine-wave inverter in 2001, the world’s first plastic-body inverter in 2002 (named an “Innovation of the Decade” by India Today), and the world’s first Home UPS in 2003 — plus a DSIR-certified R&D unit, a portfolio of 250+ products, and a record of 100+ patents filed at roughly two a month. The same restless thinking shaped his marketing: the highway-dhaba boards that carried each dhaba’s name beneath the Su-Kam logo, the branded shikaras on Dal Lake, the “Power on Wheels” demonstration vans, the classified-column advertising, and the “Sales Ka Baazigar” television show. The chapter frames it all around a handful of lessons — don’t lose faith in yourself, turn problems into opportunities, cannibalise your own products, get inside people’s minds, and take care of your employees and partners.
The book's conclusion was simple: like the handful of entrepreneurs who changed how ordinary people experience electricity, Kunwer Sachdev built one of India's most admired brands and reshaped an entire industry.
Further Reading
Read the full account in Harsh Pamnani's Booming Brands: Inspiring Journeys of 11 'Made in India' Brands. The recognition is noted on Kunwer Sachdev's Wikipedia profile, and more of his story is documented across SolarManOfIndia.com. His latest work continues at kunwwer.ai.
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.