A builder's story, told through what he built.
Kunwer Sachdev didn't set out to be famous. He set out to fix a problem — unreliable power in Indian homes — and he fixed it the only way he knew how: by inventing the products, patenting them, and shipping them at scale.
A country that couldn't keep the lights on
In the 1990s, Indian homes ran on unreliable power and the inverters that backed them up were crude, dangerous metal boxes — mostly unbranded, with no serious indigenous product. Kunwer Sachdev, then running a cable-TV business he had built from 1988, saw a market everyone tolerated but nobody had truly engineered.
Treat it as a product and a patent
He approached power backup the way an inventor would — not as a commodity to resell, but as a product to design, protect and improve. In 1998 he founded Su-Kam with ₹10,000 and built India's first MOSFET-based single-battery inverter. Then came the breakthrough that defined him: India's first plastic-body inverter, the CHIC, which India Today named 'Innovation of the Decade.'
Putting real technology into everyday machines
Su-Kam pioneered MOSFET, microcontroller and DSP sine-wave technology in ordinary household inverters — and created the 'Home UPS,' a product category the whole industry adopted within a year. Kunwer Sachdev became the first Indian entrepreneur to patent in the power-backup industry, eventually filing 77 technology and design patents in India, the US and beyond.
Commercialising solar, not just demonstrating it
Years before solar went mainstream in India, Su-Kam launched one of the country's first hybrid solar PCUs (power conditioning units) and a Solar Home Lighting System. The goal was never a showcase project — it was to put affordable, reliable solar power inside ordinary Indian homes. That mission is what earned him the title India Today gave him in December 2017: The Solar Man of India.
India's first global solar-and-power brand
Su-Kam grew into a ₹1,200-crore company (2012–13) exporting to 90+ countries, with six manufacturing plants across Gurgaon and Baddi and a dedicated R&D facility. It became the first Indian power-electronics brand to operate at genuine global scale — built on products and patents rather than marketing.
Still inventing
Kunwer Sachdev now drives product strategy and innovation at Su-Vastika, a power-backup and energy-storage company building lithium BESS and solar hybrid systems to replace diesel generators and ageing lead-acid batteries. The through-line across three decades is unchanged: build it, patent it, ship it.
He is the Solar Man of India because he put solar power into ordinary homes.