SaaS

Small Town SaaS Startup Raises Crores in Global Venture Capital

Kuldeep Pisda

04 Aug 2025 — 3 min read

Raising Crores Abroad: A Small Town SaaS Leap

Hook: One Chance, Two Worlds

Four years ago, in a modest home outside Nashik, Anil Kulkarni’s internet connection struggled to keep pace with his ambition. Driven by the frustration of endless excel sheets and clunky processes from his parents’ distribution business, Anil decided to solve a local problem with a tech-first mindset. He figured it would help his family—maybe even a couple of nearby shops. He never expected that this tiny spark would ignite a path to raising crores in venture capital from investors halfway across the world.

“I thought, if I can automate my parents’ paperwork, that would be a win. Selling that solution abroad? I never saw that coming.”

Early Days: Local Problems, Global Dreams

Anil’s first brush with entrepreneurship was far from glamorous. Armed with a borrowed laptop and a public library Wi-Fi password scribbled in his diary, he started sketching out what would become “LedgerLock”—a simple SaaS to automate order management for local distributors. Task lists spilled onto notepads. Crashing code. Missed bus rides to the city for government registrations.

The hardest part was the loneliness. No co-founder, no investors, barely enough savings to buy coffee for the one developer willing to help on weekends. Most people in his town didn’t know what “SaaS” meant. Even fewer understood why he was working nights instead of helping full-time in the family business.

“My biggest challenge was convincing my own family this wasn’t just an online distraction.”

Staying focused meant ignoring skepticism and hitting small milestones each week: a working demo, the first customer’s feedback, a landing page with no traffic—yet.

Key Milestones: First Customers, First Revenue, The Pivot

Tapping The First Customer:Using pure hustle, Anil demoed LedgerLock at a nearby traders’ association. Most were unimpressed, but a fertilizer dealer signed up for a trial. The software was buggy, but it saved him hours in clerical work. He recommended Anil to another business in Mumbai—it was the momentum he needed.
Early Revenue & Word Spreads:By his fourth customer, Anil hit a modest ₹6,000 in monthly revenue. Nothing fancy, but it validated that someone would pay for his solution. He could fund small upgrades. More importantly, he joined global SaaS forums for Indian founders, where he saw a similar need from distributors in developing markets abroad.
The Accidental Pivot:A cold email from a distributor in Kenya—who had read one of Anil’s forum posts—asked for a version with additional modules. Tailoring the product for new use cases, Anil discovered international SMB pain points looked remarkably like those in Nashik. Within six months, 70% of new signups came from outside India.
First Steps Abroad:Realizing his growth was coming from users beyond India, Anil opened a foreign entity—with the help of an accelerator’s structured program—and pitched at their virtual demo day. A US seed fund invested $180,000. Anil remembers seeing the wire transfer notification and feeling a surreal sense of validation. He had raised multiple crores, working from a room with a view of sugarcane fields.
Scaling Up & Staying Grounded:With funding secured, Anil hired his first full-time engineers and support staff, built a more robust SaaS platform, and shifted customer support to a “follow the sun” model. Despite now onboarding users from 13 countries, he continued visiting small distributors in rural Maharashtra, rooting product roadmaps in real conversations.

“Growth didn’t make me feel successful. Building something useful for people with challenges like mine—that’s what kept me going.”

Lessons Learned: Insights for Early-Stage SaaS Founders

Start narrow, but stay curious about global markets.Anil began by solving a very niche problem. Curiosity, not just ambition, led him to discover a broader (and international) market fit. He never anticipated that overseas customers would relate to his product, but openness to unexpected opportunities fueled outsized growth.
Build credibility before you chase capital.Early revenue—even a few paying users—gave Anil leverage when pitching international investors. He could show that his idea worked in the wild and that there was real, repeatable demand. It made conversations about fundraising much easier, and the terms more founder-friendly.
Leverage online communities to break barriers.Most of Anil’s crucial breaks—his first international customer, connection with the accelerator, and early investor intros—happened through industry forums and virtual communities. He credits participation over perfection. His advice: share your journey online, regardless of how unfinished it feels.

Closing: The Ongoing Leap

Anil’s story is far from over. LedgerLock is used by businesses across three continents, but the founder still runs weekly customer calls and posts updates in forums under the same username he chose in his small town library.