When Su-Kam People Build Their Own Company
This post in the series is different from the others. The previous stories were about individuals — one person, one journey, one chapter. This one is about three people. Three people who worked at Su-Kam, in different departments, with different strengths and different relationships with me. And who, after leaving, came together to build something of their own.
Smarten Power Systems was co-founded by Arun Bhardwaj, Rajnish Sharma, and Ravi Dutt — all three of whom spent significant years at Su-Kam. When I look at what they have built, I feel something that is not quite pride and not quite surprise. It is more like recognition. Of course they built something. They had the training. They had the experience. And clearly, they had the vision to put it all together.
Arun Bhardwaj — From Service to the World
Arun came to me through the reference of a close friend from Haryana. We put him in the service department first. Service is where you learn the product from the inside — not from a spec sheet, but from what actually goes wrong, what customers complain about, what needs to be fixed at midnight in a city you have never been to before.
Arun rose through the organisation over almost nine years at Su-Kam (October 2005 to June 2014). By the time he left, he had seen the company from the inside in a way that most people never do.
Rajnish Sharma — The Engineer
Rajnish brought the technical depth. In the power-electronics business, that is not a supporting role — it is the foundation. The products a company ships are only as good as the engineers who design them, and Rajnish was one of those engineers at Su-Kam who understood not just how things worked, but why they worked the way they did and how to make them better.
Ravi Dutt — The Operator
Ravi understood operations — the unglamorous, essential work of making sure that what gets designed actually gets made, delivered, and serviced. That operational discipline is what separates companies that can demo from companies that can scale.
What They Built Together
Smarten Power Systems today makes inverters, solar products, and power-backup solutions — essentially what Su-Kam made, built by people who learned the craft at Su-Kam. That is a lineage. When I see the Smarten brand in the market, I see Su-Kam's fingerprints. And I mean that as a compliment.