There is a lot of background work that happens behind our easy lives. Almost everything can be done easily today compared to a decade ago or even a few years ago. Technology is making our lives every day simpler than the day before. But you know there’s a lot of infrastructure that always keeps running behind to make all our jobs and work easier. Have you ever thought about it? From the payments we do every day to Ola or Uber, food delivery to shopping. What, not everything is a combination of multiple connections and a complex structure. In order to do all of that, these startups and companies use numerous APIs to do it simpler. For those who don’t know what APIs are, it stands for Application Programming Interfaces. In simple terms, an API is like a waiter at a restaurant. You tell the waiter what you want (for example, food), the waiter goes to the kitchen (the system), gets it prepared, and brings it back to you. Similarly, APIs help different apps and services talk to each other and exchange information instantly. In general, when you book a ride on Ola, an API connects the app to Google Maps for your location, another API calculates the distance and fare, and another API does the processing of payment
Using, testing, and managing these APIs isn’t easy. For developers and coders, working with dozens (or hundreds) of APIs can be incredibly complex, messy, and time-consuming. That’s the exact problem one Indian developer faced and decided to solve. This is where the story of Postman begins. Back in 2009, Abhinav Asthana was an intern at Yahoo Bangalore. He worked alongside Ankit Sobti, who would later become Postman’s co-founder. Their job is taking APIs and converting them into a shareable format for other developers to use. But every time they started working with a new API, they ran into the same wall, which was confusing, time-consuming, and painful. Later, while working on his startup TeliportMe, Abhinav faced the same issue again, but there was no proper tool to manage or test APIs smoothly. That’s where he met Abhijit Kane, the third co-founder.
Abhinav had an idea in his mind, which is a tool that could make working with APIs simpler, cleaner, and faster. But he couldn’t find anything like that in the market. So, he decided to build it himself. Abhinav initially wrote a simple REST API client as a Chrome extension just to help himself and his team test APIs more easily. He uploaded the tool to the Chrome Web Store, not expecting much. But what happened next surprised him. Thousands of developers started using it. They were all struggling with the same problem, and suddenly, Postman was becoming the solution everyone needed. It was simple, lightweight, and exactly what modern developers were looking for.
Realizing the scale of the opportunity, Abhinav teamed up with Ankit and Abhijit in 2014 to officially found Postman Inc. From a side project built out of necessity, Postman grew into a full-fledged API development and collaboration platform. From that simple idea today, it has grown multifold and become a well-known name all over the world. Postman today has over 30-35 million registered users worldwide, and over 5 lakh companies use it. You know, interestingly, over 98% of Fortune 500 companies use this service. Today the company has grown a lot, and it is valued at over $5.6 billion dollars. The company has headquarters in Bangalore and San Francisco as well.
There are three main reasons why the company has grown this big in a decade. One important thing is because of its organic growth. Developers loved it, recommended it, and kept coming back. Postman smartly supported this growth with a rich library of educational content, from tutorials and blogs to webinars, making it a knowledge hub. This developer-first approach built trust and credibility and positioned Postman as a true thought leader in the API space. Next, it partnered with cloud giants and API-focused startups and integrated with essential tools like GitHub, Jenkins, and CI/CD workflows. These integrations made Postman more than just a testing tool, and it became a critical API infrastructure layer. And the innovation is one of their biggest strengths; with the faster debugging, better collaboration, and also smoother API documentation, they have built an empire in this 10-year span.
If we look at their financials, we will get a clear picture. In 2024, Postman clocked $313.1 million in revenue, nearly doubling from $171.7 million in 2023. The journey looks even more impressive when we look back in time. They earned $102.7M in 2022, $52M in 2021, $36.6M in 2020, and just $8.4M in 2018. Over the period, the postman company has raised over $434 million in funding. What started as a side tool by a frustrated developer is now a backbone for millions of developers and thousands of companies worldwide. Postman’s journey is a perfect example of how solving a real problem with a simple idea can turn into a global success.
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