Obituary: Sunjay Kapur was the man who saw tomorrow and made Sona Comstar future-ready

In Connaught Place, among the many shops dotted along the circular promenade, lies Kapur Di Hatti, a jewellery store that claims its origins date back to 1890 in Lahore. While many might have walked past or even shopped at the store, not many know that the promoter family of the eponymous jewellery business is the same to which Sunjay Kapur—who passed away in the UK yesterday while playing a polo match—and his father Surinder Kapur, who broke away from the jewellery business, but used it as the inspiration behind the name of his now ₹31,764 crore component business— Sona Comstar .

Sunjay Kapur took over management of the company in 2015, after his father passed away in Munich. The senior Kapur divided his time between Delhi and Munich to turn around BLW, a German forging company worth ten times the size of Sona Okegawa, the overseas arm of the Sona Group. Sunjay Kapur was already overseeing the Indian arm of the Sona Group. But it was under him that the company aggressively expanded into electric vehicle drivetrains, making Sona Comstar a tier-one supplier to some of the biggest automakers across the globe, including Elon Musk’s Tesla. Revenue from its non-EV products accounted for less than 10% in FY24.

 However, it was during the Covid-19 pandemic that Kapur and Vivek Vikram Singh, the CEO of Sona Comstar, used the period of uncertainty of the pandemic to heavily invest in R&D. “If production isn’t happening, then invest in R&D,” Singh told Fortune India earlier. In the pandemic and lockdown-marred year, Sona Comstar spent the most it has spent on R&D, about ₹91.5 crore in FY21, almost 6% of its ₹1,566.3 crore revenue that year.

 Kapur also helmed Sona Comstar’s successful IPO in 2021, which propelled the company into launching eight new products—including one in FY24—which were commercialised faster than before. These accounted for close to half of its ₹20,700 crore order wins in FY24. It has also become the largest manufacturer of differential gears. Under his leadership, the company emphasised diversification, not depending on a single product and customer—enabling it to consistently outpace the industry growth between FY17 and FY24. 

Unfazed by the near bankruptcy of BLW, which his father acquired, Kapur forayed into the M&A space with his 2023 acquisition of the Serbian firm Novelic. Originally a radar services firm, Novelic has evolved into a diversified sensor products company under Sona’s stewardship. Recent milestones include commercialising Zone Monitoring Sensors and a breakthrough 180° field-of-view radar device, marking Sona Comstar’s foray into safety technology.

Kapur was a vocal advocate of the Indian auto component industry as well. He was the president of the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India (ACMA) during the post-pandemic recovery phase, where he called for the automotive component industry to become globally integrated, leveraging the China plus one strategy, as automakers across the world started to look beyond China. He also exhorted the industry to become future-ready with the transition to EVs, and was an advocate of localisation. At the time of his passing, he was also serving as the chairman of the CII Northern Region.

When not in boardrooms, Kapur was an accomplished polo player, and was also a member of the board of governors of the Doon School—his alma mater—where he was also the chair of the Sports and IT committees at the school. Kapur also studied corporate strategy and human resource management at the University of Buckingham. He is survived by his wife, Priya Sachdev Kapur, and his children. 

“Sunjay lived a remarkable life and was loved by all those who really knew him…he was the closest thing to a brother I had in this world, and the hole his demise has left in my life can never be filled,” said Singh. ACMA, in a press note, called Kapur a “respected leader and a visionary”, who was a passionate advocate for the automotive components industry. “Under his stewardship, ACMA witnessed significant progress in global competitiveness and EV readiness.”