Be the Change You Wish to See: Delta Thailand R&D Head’s Visionary Path to Innovation Leadership

Interview with Rupesh Tandon, Delta Thailand Head of R&D & Engineering Support

Samutprakarn, Thailand, July 25, 2024- For 35 years, Delta Thailand has been a leader of power electronics in the country and our local R&D team has been at the forefront of our development into a world-class product development center for power tools, telecom, datacenter and ICT applications. Today, Delta Thailand is taking on the critical role of EV powertrain product development to support our global growth and create unique opportunities for Thai engineering talent.

Leading our R&D team’s new growth phase is veteran R&D leader and power electronics genius Rupesh Tandon, Delta Thailand Head of R&D & Engineering Support. In this exclusive interview, he shares his incredible journey from India to Thailand where he set a track record of success and innovation culminating in the leadership of a high-performance local R&D team. A key takeaway for those looking to create a legacy of impact is that self-motivation to push your boundaries and building a growth environment to develop people are the true hallmarks of an innovative leader.


Can you please share your background, and how you got into the fascinating field of power electronics and came to work in Thailand?

I am from Mumbai, Maharashtra state. Although my ancestors come from the North of India, I was born and raised in Mumbai. I am a hardcore Mumbaikar (what we call people from Mumbai ). I graduated from the Board of Technical Education Mumbai in 1990 and started working in a company called Hybrid Electronics where I also did my final year internship. My journey as a Power Electronics engineer began here at one of first manufacturers of Switching Power Supplies in India.

I worked there for four years, starting as a design engineer, learning the basics of switching power supplies, and working my way up to become a team leader. Working in a small company gave me exposure to not only design but also qualification, QA, production skills and most importantly a business sense. We had opportunities to visit new customers with sales and interactions with them gave me a lot of perspective towards the business/sales side apart from the design requirement and skills.

In 1994. I joined a company called Ultra Tek Devices which was 100% export and manufacturing for customers like Compaq, HP, IBM, GI (General Instruments), etc. Here, I got exposure to the international market and their requirements this is also where my concept of power supply safety and EMC requirements were polished and refined. I worked for a couple more companies from 1994 to 2000 strengthening my power electronics base and in 2000 decided to explore and take on new challenges outside India.

I had a couple of opportunities in Asia and eventually chose to join Delta Thailand in Feb-2001. I was interviewed by then R&D Director Didier Chaumet, R&D Manager Alex Jong and my final interview was with our then COO Mr. Stronger Wang. Mr. Wang asked me how long I intended to stay, and my answer was about 3-5 years. He told me I should consider a long-term career and today I am here after 23 years. I have definitely loved working in Delta and the country as the people of Thailand are nice and kind.

You have a long and achievement-filled career. Can you share with us some of the highlights and milestones of your career?

It has been a long and good career so far. I would say I’m happy with what I have done and hope to do more and contribute as much as I can. When I started working with Delta my first project was tough and we didn’t win the project from the customer. Although the sample design performance was good, we lost on the costing. That made me unhappy (not demoralized) but the learnings from this project helped shape me into what I am today, and I quickly went on to successfully execute other projects at the same time.

During my third year at Delta, we filed one design patent and continued to add a second one later after 4-5 years. Of course, these inventions were in addition to the numerous successful projects that we did for the company.

In 2005, I started working on a different product line in collaboration with our European design team-DINRAIL Power Supplies. By the year 2006-7, we started realizing a new vision to have our own Delta brand power supplies and my being a part of this is one of the highlights and milestones of my career. The success of this Delta brand Power Supply Unit (PSU) is something that makes me feel proud and happy.

Congratulations on your recent appointment to Head of DET RD & Engineering Support! How will your role develop and what are you most looking forward to tackling?

Thank You. I feel the role is similar, with extended teams and surely with more responsibility. The challenge would be to understand the goals and business strategies of other Business Units and the challenges that they face in coping with their businesses and customers. We must consider how to overcome these and tackle them creating a path forward.

There is always a scope to improve and I believe we can implement improvements as a team so this would be the primary goal and we will work to improve the team’s responsiveness and technical capabilities.

What do you see as the core strengths of Delta Thailand R&D and products that our local team excels in developing? How will we carry on our success in developing EV products in Thailand?

We have very diversified products developed in the Delta Thailand R&D and our local team has the expertise to handle this diversity. We also have excellent power electronics engineers combined with firmware expertise and project management that we have been handling with expatriate talent adding a bit more diversity in terms of culture and experience.

So, we have the baseline ready to successfully develop EV products in Thailand. Although we may not have experience in automotive products, similar to what we did not have when we started switching power supply development 25 years ago and now with more sophisticated development tools and continuous learning we can soon have a team to independently develop EV products here.

Currently, our association with the European R&D teams and the product knowledge transfer, which is an ongoing activity, and we are already implementing co-development for products here at the Thailand R&D center.

What unique opportunities does Delta R&D offer that engineers cannot find at other electronics companies in Thailand, and what makes Delta a great workplace for R&D talents?

I can safely say that there is no other power electronics company with the size of Delta Electronics in Thailand. Unlike the other companies where engineers might be limited to simple tasks like testing, we offer real R&D work to engineers.

Delta is the largest power electronics company in the country with design centers in various parts of the world like the USA, Germany, UK, China and India. We offer global networking opportunities to engineers which is not easy to get at another electronics company in Thailand.

In addition, Delta works with global top-tier customers who are pushing the work skills boundaries of our engineers. Delta also offers excellent career growth and engineers have the best exposure to work with a best-in-class and very competitive work environment.

You are a patent-holding R&D leader. What drives you to continually seek out new inventions and what do you see as the mindset and behaviors of an innovative leader?

I would like to see a leader who is self-motivated and eager to push his/her boundaries, I have always been a self-motivated person that has gotten me to where I am today. I believe curiosity, creativity and passion for learning something new are the key things that I would like to see in the mindset and behavior of a leader.

Another trait of an innovative leader is being willing to collaborate, take risks, and accept ideas from anyone in the team and giving them the feeling of inclusivity.

What do you think are the top qualities R&D engineers should have, and what are the top skills and future technologies to learn?

I believe learning has no limits and I am still learning as each day passes by. When defining the top qualities of an R&D engineer, I could list down the whole Bible. However, what I would like to ideally see in an R&D engineer is his/her problem-solving skills, technical knowledge, curiosity, teamwork skills (behavior towards other team members’ or collaborative nature), leadership skills (attitude) and communication skills.

There are so many things to learn and vast opportunities that are available in fields like, AI, data analysis, cyber security, cloud computing and IoT. With power supplies heading towards compact design (high power density) we are looking at liquid cooling for power supplies and adding various communication protocols e.g. IO-Link, Profi-BUS, Can-BUS. These various communications protocols are integrated with power supplies and software platforms for power system (PS) configuration.

Over many years, you have built a successful R&D career and personal life in Thailand. What do you feel is the secret to achieving domain leadership while raising a family overseas?

I think the challenge of career-life balance is applicable for everyone whether you are based locally or overseas. However, when you are overseas it becomes a bit more challenging in terms of keeping your culture and integrity. Trying to strike a balance between professional and personal life means setting boundaries for work hours and taking time for family activities to ensure that there is time for you to relax and recharge.

Culture adaptability is something very important when living overseas it also helps build relationships professionally and personally. I’m very happy that Thai culture is not too different from Indian culture which has also helped us to raise our children with a similar background as we would have back in India.

Having effective time management was one part that helped me juggle my professional responsibilities and family commitments. This means prioritizing my tasks and learning to delegate when necessary. Achieving domain leadership and raising a family are both big tasks and I would not have achieved it without the help of my life partner. I am very thankful to the almighty for that to have such an understanding partner.

As an R&D leader, how do you empower so many talented and diverse individuals to work toward one goal?
Communication, it plays a very important role everywhere (personally and professionally). Make it loud and clear to the team about the team’s goal and expectations and what they are working towards, then keep reminding them from time to time.

It’s important to make everyone feel valued and heard, include them in decision-making empower them by giving them autonomy to make decisions and take ownership. Support them in their failures and help them to rise back. This will boost their confidence and build a team environment where they will do the same with their juniors when they mentor them (they will do what they see and go through themselves).

Is there anything you would like to share with your Delta colleagues in Thailand and around the world?

Delta is a great company with such diversified culture and tradition. I consider myself lucky to be a part of the Delta Family.

What I would like to share is that in this fast-changing world, we all want to see change for the better and always want people to change or improve to meet our needs/requirements. However, what I would say to all is: “Be the change that you wish to see!”

This short maxim is easier said than done but it should be the attitude we aspire to have. If each one of us thinks this way and changes even a bit, our world then we will be moving towards a better place.

About the Author (Editorial Team)

David Nakayama

If content is king, there must be a kingmaker. And the universal theme in my favorite stories is our innate human desire for freedom. I have a master’s degree in Chinese education and experience spanning industries and countries. As the Comms guy at DET, I’m obsessed with the stories behind our products and people. Share your stories with me  https://www.linkedin.com/in/yushi-david-nakayama/

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