₹10,000, a Pen Box, and a Full Page That Said: Become a Problem Solver

Why That Interview Happened

Magazines do not wake up and invent CEOs. They chase arcs that already feel inevitable on the page.

By early 2014, Su-Kam under my watch as CEO & MD was no longer a dealer rumour. We were a national power-solutions name — inverters in homes that knew load-shedding by heart — and the company the press then rounded to about ₹1,000 crore, started with ₹10,000. English business magazines had already tasted the origin story. Business Today’s Leaderspeak (April 2013) had printed my “firsts” in crisp English: C.K. Prahalad, pens, Shyam Telecom, the first million, the pen-business break.

Jagran Josh Plus needed something else. It was not a B2B solar weekly. It was a Hindi success / CEO Talk leaf for readers who still measured ambition in school marks, first jobs, and whether a degree was a ticket or a trap. Their brief almost writes itself when they find a founder whose father was a railway clerk, who sold pens before he sold power backup, and who kept saying the job was not to polish a resume — it was to solve the problem in front of you.

That is why 19 February 2014, page 21, interaction Amit Nidhi, did not open with watt-peak or channel margins. The headline was the brief: बने प्रॉब्लम सॉल्वर — Become a Problem Solver. India was living through blackouts and a politics that promised power for all; Su-Kam’s business was the blackout. A Hindi magazine that teaches young readers how to climb does not need my inverter SKU list. It needs the man who treated every failed pen deal and every dead grid hour as a problem with a name.

The Story They Came to Hear

I told them what I have always told the room when the cameras are honest. Money at home was thin. School years meant standing with my brother and a box of pens — not as romance, as rent and dinner. The pen trade taught failure before Su-Kam taught scale: you can work a counter and still watch a dream refuse to expand. After college, that disappointment sat in the sidebar as my first disappointment. It also sat in my bones as the reason I would not freeze on one assignment forever.

Passion without risk is a hobby. Risk without passion is gambling. The page put both words next to each other because that is how Su-Kam was built — cable accessories to inverters to a factory floor that had to keep learning, long before anyone called me the Solar Man of India. College already trained a habit: people brought me problems. I preferred the ones who brought solutions. That sentence is why the magazine could title the leaf without asking for a product demo.

They Asked If You Need an MBA to Lead

Hindi career magazines love this fight — degree versus ability — because their readers live it. I said then what I still mean: an MBA is not the only ladder. Inside Su-Kam, many who rose were simple graduates who won on capability. Idols on that page included builders like Ratan Tata and N.R. Narayana Murthy, and Akio Morita’s Made in Japan — books and names that teach institutions, not shortcuts. For a Josh Plus reader in 2014, that was oxygen: you can start without pedigree if you stay married to the problem.

MD Speak — Five Firsts That Travelled Across Languages

The sidebar — एमडी स्पीक — is the fingerprint that proves this leaf and Business Today’s Leaderspeak are cousins. Same firsts. Two languages. One founder still in the chair.

Four Rules They Printed for Start-ups

Magazines need takeaways. These were mine on that page — not slogans for a deck, rules we had already paid for:

• Tell the customer the flaw — honesty is how you keep the heart of the trade.
• Put profit back into the company — not into real estate or unrelated diversions as the first reflex.
• Decide quickly — hesitation taxes every factory floor.
• Think ahead of the current win — the next goal before comfort sets in.

Same Year — From Problem Solver to Solar on the Budget Page

Josh Plus was the personal leaf. Months later, the same MD chair spoke policy to Business Today: give solar priority-sector lending status. That is the through-line of 2014 for me — Hindi living-room storytelling in February, English budget wishlist in July — one company learning that the biggest problem left to solve was not only the blackout at night, but the sun waiting unused on every roof. People later called me the Solar Man of India for the plants and the villages. This page is where Hindi press named the habit underneath: become a problem solver.

What I Want on Record

Kunwer Sachdev — CEO & MD of Su-Kam · Solar Man of India. 19 February 2014: Jagran Josh Plus did not interview a datasheet. They interviewed a ₹10,000 start, a pen box, a railway clerk’s son, and an MD who had already been asked for his “firsts” in English — and they titled the Hindi full page the only way that story can end: बने प्रॉब्लम सॉल्वर.

Verified Sources

• Press scan — Jagran Josh Plus (19 Feb 2014), p.21 — बने प्रॉब्लम सॉल्वर / Amit Nidhi
• Business Today Leaderspeak (28 Apr 2013) — Kunwer Sachdev MD Speak firsts
• Business Today (7 Jul 2014) — Budget: priority-sector lending for solar (same MD year)
• Companion — National press spine (ET, CELERITY, NewsX)
• Companion — Corporate Focus press clippings 2006–2008
• Facebook Archive

Related

• National press — ET, CELERITY, NewsX
• Corporate Focus clippings 2006–2008
• Nine books — published shelf
• Facebook Archive

FAQ

Historical Documentation Notice:
This article documents a historical press interview under the leadership of Kunwer Sachdev as Founder & Managing Director of Su-Kam Power Systems Ltd. (1988–2018). He exited in 2019 under the IBC process and holds no association with Su-Kam or its subsequent management. Narrative follows the Jagran Josh Plus page scan (19 Feb 2014) and Business Today Leaderspeak (28 Apr 2013). Context on why the interview ran is founder framing of contemporaneous company scale and magazine format — not a claim of unpublished Jagran editorial memos. Jagran Josh Plus is not Josh Talks.