India's Power Backup and Solar Inverter Market Evolves Beyond Backup: Smarten's Tirath Khaira on Reliability, Energy Security, and Domestic Manufacturing
Tirath Khaira, COO and Director at Smarten, discusses solar inverters, backup power systems, energy security, domestic manufacturing, MPPT technology, and how Indian consumers can choose reliable power solutions.
India's power backup and solar inverter market is growing steadily, driven by rising energy demand, rooftop solar adoption, and increasing focus on energy security. Supported by government initiatives and domestic manufacturing efforts, the sector is expected to maintain strong growth in the coming years.
In this exclusive StartupTalky interview, Tirath Khaira, COO and Director at Smarten, shares insights on inverter selection, solar technology, product reliability, domestic manufacturing, and the future of energy independence for Indian households.
StartupTalky: What are the three questions a buyer should ask before buying a power backup or solar inverter product?
Tirath Khaira: For a residential or small commercial buyer, I would advise them not to begin with technical jargon such as sine wave, PWM, MPPT, VA rating, or battery Ah. Those are important, but the more practical starting point is to ask three simple questions.
First: what exactly do I need to run during a power cut, and for how long? A buyer should list the essential loads, which could be the lights, fans, Wi-Fi router, TV, computer, refrigerator, water pump, CCTV, POS system, etc., and estimate the required backup time. This determines the inverter capacity, battery size, and whether the system should be designed as a basic UPS, a solar-ready UPS, or a full solar hybrid solution.
Second: What is the quality of electricity in my area? In many parts of India, the challenge is not only power cuts. It is also low voltage, high voltage, sudden surges, frequency variation, and unstable grid behaviour. A product that works well in a stable urban grid may fail or underperform in a rural or semi-urban environment. Therefore, buyers should check whether the product has a wide input voltage range, overload protection, short-circuit protection, battery deep-discharge protection, thermal protection, and proper power conditioning.
Third: Who will support the product after installation? Power backup products are not like ordinary consumer electronics. They work under stress every day. The quality of installation, battery matching, service support, and warranty response matter as much as the product itself. A slightly cheaper product can become very expensive if it damages appliances, fails in peak summer, or has poor service backup.
At Smarten, our approach has always been that the customer should not have to become an engineer to choose the right product. The product must be designed for Indian usage conditions, and the dealer or installer must be able to guide the buyer honestly.
StartupTalky: What engineering shortcuts do manufacturers take, and how do they show up as field failures?
Tirath Khaira: In power electronics, cost reduction is always possible, but there is a difference between value engineering and cutting corners. After nearly three decades in this industry, I would say the most common shortcuts are in five areas.
The first is undersized power components.MOSFETs, IGBTs, transformers, inductors, relays, and heat sinks are sometimes selected too close to their limit. The product may pass a short factory test, but in Indian homes, it may face high ambient temperature, poor ventilation, overloads, voltage fluctuation, and long backup cycles. After two or three summers, the stress begins to show as MOSFET failure, transformer heating, relay welding, or repeated tripping.
The second shortcut is poor thermal design. Power electronics is fundamentally about managing heat. If the PCB layout, air flow, heat sink size, and component spacing are not properly designed, the unit may look compact and attractive, but its life will be reduced dramatically. Heat dries capacitors, weakens solder joints, and accelerates semiconductor failure.
The third is a compromise on capacitors and magnetics. Electrolytic capacitors, transformers, and inductors are not glamorous components, but they determine reliability. Low-grade capacitors lose capacitance faster. Poorly designed magnetics lead to heating, noise, poor efficiency, and failure under overload.
The fourth is inadequate protection logic. A good inverter or UPS must protect itself, the battery, and the connected load. Some low-cost products have very basic protection circuits. In the field, this results in battery over-discharge, charging problems, output distortion, appliance damage, or complete product failure.
The fifth is the continued use of square-wave technology in applications where it is no longer appropriate. Square-wave inverters are still common in the Indian market because they are cheaper to manufacture and can appear attractive to price-sensitive buyers. However, many modern homes now use sensitive appliances; LED TVs, Wi-Fi routers, laptops, refrigerators with electronic controls, washing machines, medical devices, and other equipment with electronic circuits. A square-wave output is much harsher on such loads than a pure sine-wave output. It can lead to humming noise, heating, reduced efficiency, unstable performance, and, in some cases, shorter appliance life. For today’s homes and small businesses, a pure sine-wave inverter is no longer a luxury; it should be treated as the standard.
The real test of a powerful product is not whether it works on day one. The real test is whether it works reliably after three summers, two monsoons, thousands of charging cycles, and many unstable grid events.
StartupTalky: Are households now seeing backup power and solar as an energy-security hedge, not just a cost-saving measure?
Tirath Khaira: Yes, there is a visible shift. Earlier, many households looked at backup power mainly as a convenience product: “I need my fans and lights during a power cut.” Solar was often seen as a bill-saving product.
That is changing. Energy has become a household-level strategic issue. Geopolitical shocks in the Middle East have again shown how dependent India remains on imported energy. Recent reports around LPG supply disruption noted India’s dependence on LPG imports, with a large share linked to the Middle East supply chain. The International Energy Agency has also highlighted how disruption around the Strait of Hormuz can affect energy security and affordability globally.
For the Indian household, the conclusion is simple: the more energy you can generate, store, and manage locally, the more resilient you become. This does not mean every home will immediately install a large solar-plus-storage system. But the motivation is shifting from “How much will I save on my bill?” to “How do I protect my family from power uncertainty, rising tariffs, and supply instability?”
Government policy is also reinforcing this shift. PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana has a target of benefiting one crore households and offers subsidies that make rooftop solar more accessible. That kind of policy support changes consumer psychology. Solar is no longer seen as an elite or experimental product. It is becoming part of mainstream household infrastructure.
In fact, solar has now reached a stage where the demand is no longer limited to people who are merely curious about the technology. In urban India, there are many households that would like to install solar but are unable to do so because they live in apartments, builder floors, rented homes, or properties where they do not have independent roof access. This itself is an important sign of market maturity. The constraint is no longer only awareness or affordability; in many cases, the constraint is physical space and ownership of usable rooftop area. As a result, the next phase of solar growth will also need solutions for shared rooftops, group housing societies, community solar models, and more compact solar-plus-storage systems.
So yes, cost saving remains important, but energy independence and reliability are becoming equally important motivations.
StartupTalky: Which components are most difficult to source domestically, and what would it take to indigenise them?
Tirath Khaira: India has made good progress in electronics manufacturing, but power electronics still has areas of import dependence. In a solar inverter or home UPS, the most difficult components to source domestically at consistent quality and scale are usually high-quality power semiconductors, specialised ICs, certain grades of electrolytic and film capacitors, precision magnetic materials, high-reliability relays, connectors, and some battery-management components.
Semiconductors are the biggest issue. A recent Government of India response noted that semiconductors constitute almost 70% of electronic component imports, which explains why the government is pushing programmes such as Semicon India and the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme. India has also approved large electronics component manufacturing projects to strengthen domestic supply chains and reduce import dependence.
For true indigenisation, we need more than final assembly. We need domestic capability across the full manufacturing value chain, from product engineering, process development, and tooling to materials, testing, reliability qualification, and consistent quality control. It is relatively easy to assemble a product using imported parts; the real challenge is to build repeatable Indian capability that can deliver the required performance, safety, and reliability at scale. That is where long-term value addition is created.
Smarten has always been strong on the design and manufacturing side rather than being merely a trading or assembly brand. Our upcoming Jhajjar facility is part of that next step: scaling capacity, improving process control, increasing domestic value addition, and building a more robust manufacturing base for the future.
StartupTalky: How large is the actual energy-yield difference between MPPT and PWM, and is MPPT always justified?
Tirath Khaira: MPPT is technically superior because it continuously tracks the maximum power point of the solar panel and converts that available power more efficiently into battery charging. In simple terms, it allows the panel to operate closer to its optimum voltage and current point instead of forcing it to behave like the battery voltage.
In Indian field conditions, the practical gain of MPPT over PWM is usually in the range of about 10% to 30%, depending on the site. The difference is higher when the panel voltage is significantly above the battery voltage, during winter mornings, cloudy conditions, partial shading, longer cable runs, or when the system is used heavily through the day. In a well-matched small system under strong sunlight, the gain may be smaller.
So, is MPPT always justified? Not always. For a very small, low-cost solar charging system where the panel and battery are closely matched, and the customer’s budget is the biggest constraint, PWM may still be acceptable.
But for most serious residential and small commercial solar backup systems, MPPT is the better choice. The additional cost is recovered through better energy harvest, faster charging, better battery utilisation, and greater flexibility in panel configuration. As panel prices have reduced and customer expectations have increased, the case for MPPT has become stronger.
My view is simple: PWM is a budget solution; MPPT is an energy-management solution.
StartupTalky: How does Smarten design products for India’s poor grid quality, and what specifications should buyers insist on?
Tirath Khaira: India is not one uniform grid. A product may operate in a metro apartment, a small town shop, a farmhouse, a rural home, or an area with long low-voltage periods and sudden high-voltage surges. Therefore, we design for Indian stress conditions, not just textbook conditions.
At Smarten, our key design priorities are a wide input operating range, stable sine-wave output, robust charging, overload handling, short-circuit protection, surge tolerance, temperature protection, and long-duration reliability. We also pay particular attention to battery management, because the battery is often the most stressed and most expensive part of a backup system.
One important feature in Smarten products is the ability to recover and recharge a fully discharged battery, provided the battery itself has not suffered irreversible damage. In real Indian usage, batteries are sometimes deeply discharged because of long power cuts, irregular charging, or prolonged non-use. A good inverter or UPS should not simply reject such a battery immediately; it should have intelligent charging logic that can safely attempt recovery, protect the system, and bring the battery back into usable condition wherever possible.
Thermal design is also especially important because Indian products often operate in high ambient temperatures and poorly ventilated locations.
Buyers should insist on the following specifications before purchasing any power conditioning or backup product:
- True sine-wave output, especially for sensitive appliances, motors, and electronics.
- Wide input voltage range, suitable for their local grid conditions.
- Proper overload and short-circuit protection.
- Intelligent battery protection and charging, including overcharge protection, deep-discharge safeguards, and the ability to safely recover a fully discharged battery where technically possible.
- Thermal protection and adequate heat dissipation.
- Robust charging performance, suitable for long outages and frequent cycling.
- Solar compatibility, in case they may add panels later.
- Service network and warranty support.
A backup system should not only provide electricity during a power cut. It should protect the appliances, protect the battery, and protect the customer’s investment.
StartupTalky: What does genuine domestic manufacturing require beyond assembling imported components, and how far has Smarten moved along that value chain?
Tirath Khaira: Genuine domestic manufacturing means much more than importing a kit, putting it in a cabinet, and calling it Made in India. In power electronics, real manufacturing capability has several layers.
The first layer is product design: circuit design, magnetics design, PCB layout, firmware, control logic, and enclosure design. The second is process capability: production engineering, testing fixtures, calibration systems, quality control, and traceability. The third is supply-chain development; working with Indian vendors for cabinets, transformers, wiring harnesses, PCBs, mechanical parts, packaging, and, gradually, more electronic components. The fourth is field feedback and continuous improvement; learning from Indian operating conditions and feeding that back into the design.
Smarten has moved significantly along this value chain. We are not simply an importer or label brand. Our strength has been in understanding Indian backup-power requirements, designing products for those conditions, manufacturing at scale, and supporting those products through the channel. The new Jhajjar manufacturing facility is a major step because it allows us to double production capacity from 600 to 1,200 units per day, while also improving manufacturing discipline, scalability, and quality systems.
At the same time, I would not claim that any Indian power electronics company is fully independent of imports today. Critical components such as semiconductors and certain electronic parts still depend heavily on global supply chains. The realistic path is progressive localization: design in India, manufacture in India, qualify more Indian vendors, increase domestic component sourcing, and participate in the broader national electronics ecosystem.
For us, Make in India is not a slogan. It is a long-term capability-building process. The companies that invest in engineering, testing, vendor development, and quality systems will be the ones that create lasting value.
Apoorva Bajj
