The untold story of $2B startup - Postman: From basti to San Francisco

Most of the utilities we use today, such as online transfers, connectivity and teamwork, are all carried out using APIs. For starters, APIs carry the data to you when you check the weather on your computer, via a search engine or a weather app. The weather data is not owned by Google or the software, but it uses APIs to source it. API testing is a method of software testing that includes explicitly and as part of integration testing, testing application programming interfaces (APIs) to decide whether they satisfy functionality, compatibility, usability, and security requirements. Postman is the collaboration platform for API development. It is the provider of a collaboration platform designed to offer an application program interface

Founders 

Postman, created by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti and Abhijit Kane, was launched at the end of 2015. Abhinav decided to address the issue of debugging for himself with the API (application programme interface), as he didn't find something that was nice enough, and that's how Postman began as a side project. The start-up was launched in late 2014 and proceeded to enter into the exclusive unicorn league in under six years. The company's software produces and sends HTTP queries, logically generates collections and directories for community requests, stores requests, changes contexts, and customises scripts to simplify team and corporate communication.

Postman- From Basti To San Francisco

Postman, founded in Bangalore, is defined as the full toolchain for developers of APIs. It is an elegant, modular tool used to easily, efficiently and precisely create linked applications via APIs. Postman is a web-based framework that enables Application Programming Interfaces to be designed, built and operated by organisations and developers. 

"The mission statement of Postman says, "We build at Postman with the same curiosity we find in our consumers. We appreciate not only achievements but failures, honesty and honest contact. We concentrate on concrete targets of our work that add up to a greater vision. Our inclusive work culture ensures that everyone is valued as equally important pieces of our final product. We are dedicated to delivering the best products we can."

Society catering 

Software engineers who develop, test, and change APIs are the target market for Postman (application programme interface). Without writing extra code for testing, it allows test APIs. This service is very critical since most current computing systems are heavily API based. We are in a cloud-driven age, where every day, the number of enterprises that store and access cloud data grows. 

Postman offers a forum that, through cooperation with different partners, lets app developers accelerate the process of development. More than 11 million developers worldwide and more than 500,000 enterprises worldwide, including those including Microsoft, use the platform. According to the company, 98 per cent of Fortune 500 companies use the platform. The company is a collaboration platform designed to offer an application program interface. 

Funding 

The start-up raised $1 million in Nexus Investment Partners seed capital in 2016. A year back, it received $7 million from the same fund as part of its Series A. While the start-up has not disclosed its investment estimates in its previous funding rounds, it is reported that in its $50 million Series B round raised in June last year, it was priced at about $350 million. This means that the startup's value has jumped almost 500 per cent over the past year. 

And last month, in its Series C round, led by New York City-based venture capital and private equity company Insight Partners, it raised $150 million at a $2 billion valuation. The average income estimated by Postman is $53.4M a year. The postman delivers some of its services to customers in a small capacity, free of charge. For the remainder, it charges its clients from $8 and $18 per user. That is how income is generated by the business.

Future growth

Initially based in Bengaluru, Postman moved its headquarters to San Francisco in 2017 to better represent the interests of its population and to be closer to its biggest client base. Postman planned to extend free customer assistance, which is a function monetized as an add-on service by several SaaS businesses. In comparison, the VC dollars of the API platform have since been built up by an internationally dispersed support team and a developer relations team. Postman has advocated an API-first approach to help build productive APIs, after historically being the last resort of programmers. The world has adopted the norm of social distancing and this means digital services will help us move forward. At such a time, companies like Postman, help create a strong backend for digital services.