From Raipur, On Purpose: How a Tier-2 CA-Founder is Building the Software Stack for India’s Next Wave of SMBs

In Indian startup conversations, geography is destiny. Bangalore for engineers. Mumbai for finance. Delhi for everything else. CA Karan Gupta -a Chartered Accountant building an AI and ERP company from Raipur, Chhattisgarh -is quietly betting that this assumption has run its course.

“Most of India’s CA-and-tech conversation imports its vocabulary from the metros,” he says. “The reality of running a serious practice and shipping serious software from a Tier-2 city -different talent pool, different clients, different economics -barely shows up online. I’m building from inside that reality, on purpose.”

His company, Teknosage Innovation Private Limited, founded on September 2, 2025, is the centrepiece of a multi-year buildout aimed at one of India’s largest underserved markets: operational software for Indian small and mid-sized businesses, designed by people who actually understand Indian compliance.

A Solar System of Software

The flagship initiative at Teknosage is Solaris Suite -a modular ERP architecture inspired by the solar system. Each product is named after a planet, designed as an independent module that connects into a unified operational system.

Jupiter -the workforce and HR management system -went live in December 2025 and is already deployed in corporate environments. Neptune, an AI-powered ERP currently in development, will follow. More planets are planned, each addressing a specific operational function inside Indian SMBs.

The architecture is unusual for a reason. Most enterprise software in India is sold as a monolithic platform -buy everything, integrate everything, fight with everything. Solaris Suite assumes the opposite: businesses adopt modules incrementally, and each module must work as well alone as it does with the others. “It’s how Indian SMBs actually buy software,” Karan says. “Not the way enterprise vendors wish they would.”

The Compliance-First Thesis

Underneath the product roadmap is a thesis Karan has been refining for half a decade.

“Software for Indian businesses gets built by people who don’t actually do the compliance work,” he says. “The forms are wrong, the workflows fight against the regulations, and we end up doing manually what software should do automatically. Teknosage exists because someone needed to build software as a person who runs Indian compliance for a living -not as someone who hired a consultant to read the spec.”

That insight didn’t come from a strategy meeting. It came from six years of running a CA practice across sectors most software founders never see -oil refinery operations, agricultural marketing, retail, and cooperative societies. Each industry has its own compliance peculiarities, and each one taught him something he couldn’t have learned from a textbook on AI in business.

The hands-on philosophy extends to implementation. Teknosage doesn’t just sell software -it owns the integration into client operations, what Karan calls “compliance-first, India-ready software systems.”

Building Beyond the Product

Software is one part of a broader ecosystem Karan is building from Raipur.

In May 2026, The Boardroom is set to open -a physical space inside Teknosage’s office that will host AI cohorts for working professionals, founder bootcamps, and learning programs for CA students and kids. The instinct, again, is geographic: bring serious learning rooms to Tier-2 India, instead of telling people they need to leave for Mumbai or Bangalore to be part of the AI conversation.

He also founded The Secret Society in early 2025 -a private Raipur community now at 134 members, with 22 events hosted so far. It’s structured in layers: open events anyone can attend, a deeper circle for those who keep showing up, paid membership, and an invitation-only inner core. “The point isn’t networking,” he says. “It’s the kind of relationships that change how you think and what you build.”

Together, Teknosage, The Boardroom, and The Secret Society form what Karan describes as an integrated ecosystem -software, learning, and community -all anchored in a Tier-2 city, all aimed at the same audience: Indian SMBs and the founders, professionals, and CAs who serve them.

Why Raipur, on Purpose

Karan is direct about why he hasn’t moved.

“Chhattisgarh is on the verge of something. Traditional businesses are evolving into structured enterprises. Founders here are curious and capable. The talent’s available -it’s just been told for too long that to be taken seriously, you have to be somewhere else. I’m building proof that you don’t.”

The next 18 months will test the thesis. Solaris Suite’s planet-by-planet roadmap will keep expanding. The Boardroom will run its first cohorts. The Secret Society will continue its layered growth. And Teknosage will move from validating its first product to scaling its first ten clients.

For a country that has long assumed its tech and finance future will be metro-built, Karan’s bet is worth paying attention to. “Building from Raipur, on purpose” isn’t a slogan he’s borrowed. It’s the operating principle of an experiment whose results are still ahead.

The Builder Behind It

CA Karan Gupta has been in chartered practice for six years, qualifying with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India in 2019. Beyond Teknosage, he serves as ICAI Faculty for the AURA and ITT programs, where he has mentored over 600 CA students across seven years. He has conducted training programs for the Chhattisgarh State Electricity Board, Amity University, MAIC College, banking professionals, and corporate finance teams. In early 2025, he ran the Hands On AI Workshop in Raipur -one of the city’s first practical AI training programs for working professionals.

He has held leadership roles at JCI India for eight years – joining in 2018, becoming Chapter President of JCI Raipur Royal Capital in 2021, Chapter In-charge in 2023, Zone Vice President in 2024, and most recently completing a term as National Coordinator in 2025.

He is based in Raipur, Chhattisgarh.