Software startup Postman's valuation tops $5.6 bn after $225 mn fundraise

Postman, a leading application programming interface platform, has secured $225 million in a Series D round, placing its valuation at $5.6 billion. With this, Postman has emerged as the most-valued software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm started by Indian founders, overtaking web and mobile testing firm BrowserStack, which was valued at $4 billion in June.

The valuation of the San Francisco-headquartered firm with offices in Bengaluru, where it was founded, has almost trebled in just about one year and risen multi-fold since 2019. Postman, with team members spread across four continents, had secured $150 million in a Series C investment round led by Insight Partners at a $2-billion valuation last summer. The firm was valued at just $350 million in 2019.

The latest round was led by existing investor, New York-based global private equity and venture capital firm Insight Partners, and joined by new investors Coatue, Battery Ventures, and Bond Capital.

Postman’s existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and CRV have also participated in the new financing. In addition, DoorDash Product Leader Gokul Rajaram and Freshworks Founder Girish Mathrubootham have also joined as individual investors. The company has now raised more than $430 million across four rounds.

While BrowserStack at $4 billion is the second most valued SaaS firm, customer engagement software firm Freshworks is next at $3.5 billion valuation. Freshworks is gearing up for an initial public offering in the US. In April, Chargebee, a leading subscription billing and revenue management platform, raised a fresh round of $125 million at a $1.4-billion valuation.

Postman was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti, and Abhijit Kane.

SYSTEM Boost

• Postman is a leading application programming interface platform
• It is used by firms to build new applications faster, modernise legacy architectures and scale up business processes
• BrowserStack , Freshworks, and Chargebee are some other Indian SaaS firms

It will use the Series D capital to expand its teams in the areas of sales, marketing, product, and engineering. In addition, the company will continue to invest in its community of developers across the globe. It will support students through innovative API literacy programmes. The firm will also contribute towards open-source projects to foster a strong and thriving API ecosystem.

“This new round of funding will help Postman dramatically increase the speed of that forward motion,” said Postman Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Abhinav Asthana.

Postman continues to experience exponential growth, as APIs increasingly become the driving force for software development and business success in this decade.

Today, Postman has more than 17 million users and 500,000 organisations on its platform, making it home to the largest API community in the world. The firm counts companies such as Salesforce, Stripe, Kroger, Cisco, PayPal, and Microsoft among its customers.

APIs are growing in popularity, led by developers who are adopting the 'API-first' model to build new applications faster, modernise legacy architectures, and scale up business processes. Organisations are also adopting the API-first model to build and ship new products faster and create products of higher quality with less code.

“Postman has firmly established itself as the preferred platform for developers,” said Insight Partners Managing Director Jeff Horing.

Postman has added more than 300 employees across 13 countries since the beginning of 2020. It has more than doubled its headcount, as well as adding thousands of new customers to a customer base that includes 98 per cent of the Fortune 500. The company recently announced that its public API network is now the largest API hub in the world, with more than 75,000 APIs shared on the network.

"Coatue was impressed by Postman’s ability to solve challenges faced by developers worldwide who need to build software faster than ever,” said Coatue General Partner David Schneider, adding, “We also liked Postman's work towards providing management teams, regardless of size, proper visibility into their API landscape, and to ensure that increasingly lean teams can effectively maintain APIs.”