Postman becomes India's top SaaS unicorn

Insight Partners led the round with support from Coatue, Battery Ventures, Bond Capital, Charles River Ventures, and Nexus Venture Partners. They were joined by Gokul Rajaram, product leader at delivery app DoorDash, and Girish Mathrubootham, founder of sales and marketing SaaS company Freshworks.

Postman, which specializes in SaaS for application programming interface (API) development teams, has raised more than $430 million to date, according to AVCJ Research. Insight led a $150 million Series C last year that also included Series B investors Charles River and Nexus.

This is a competitive and well-funded sector in India, characterized largely by India-founded companies that relocate to the US to be closer to their primary clients. In terms of valuation, Postman, which also has a base in the US, is overtaking BrowserStack, a software testing platform that raised a $200 million Series B in June at a valuation of $4 billion.

For its part, BrowserStack surpassed Freshworks in 2019, which was worth $3.5 billion at the time. Other Indian or India-founded SaaS unicorns include contract management-focused Icertis, data services player Druva, financial platforms Zeta and Chargebee, and Zenoti, a wellness industry supplier that raised $80 million in June at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

Postman's API platform is used by 17 million developers and its app has been downloaded more than 60 million times since the company's inception in 2014. Clients include Salesforce, Stripe, Kroger, Cisco, and PayPal. It also claims to operate the largest public API hub globally with some 20,000 public workspaces delivered by the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Microsoft.

The company has made significant efforts in the past year to be recognized as a global leader in the API category, having launched a weekly online talk show, an API students program, and a series of dedicated online educational resources. In February, an event called Postman Galaxy was said to be the largest API conference in the world with more than 26,000 registrations.

"APIs have quickly become the fundamental building blocks of software used by developers in every industry, in every country across the globe – and Postman has firmly established itself as the preferred platform for developers," Jeff Horing, a managing director at Insight, said in a statement.

"Postman has the opportunity to become a key pillar of how enterprises build, deliver products, and seamlessly enable partnerships across the ecosystem. Their continued, rapid expansion and strong management team point to a future for Postman with virtually unlimited possibilities."

• Tweet  
• Facebook  
• LinkedIn  
• Google plus  
• Save this article  
• Send to  

• Topics
• South Asia
• Support services
• Technology
• India
• Insight Partners
• Coatue Management
• Bond Capital
• Growth capital
• SaaS