Postman surges ahead

Homegrown SaaS startup Postman is now valued at $5.6 billion after it raised $225 million in a Series D round. 

The startup will use the Series D capital to continue to invest in its community of developers across the globe, support students through API literacy programmes, and contribute toward open-source projects to foster the API ecosystem.

Founded in 2014, Postman entered the unicorn club in June 2020 at a valuation of $2 billion after its Series C funding round of $150 million. So far, it has raised more than $430 million across four rounds of funding.

The startup was launched as a side project when Founder and CEO Abhinav Asthana set out to solve the problem of API (application program interface) debugging for himself. 

Today, the platform has more than 17 million users and 500,000 organisations on its platform and claims to be the largest API community in the world.

Read all about how the Indian startup ecosystem is battling the second wave of COVID-19 here.

Here are some useful tools to help you find the nearest vaccine centres in real-time.

You can also share a tribute to COVID-19 warriors, saviours, and survivors here.

The Interview

Technology and digitisation have been instrumental in improving the agility, resilience, and innovative capabilities of businesses. Insights from analytics-driven tools have also been instrumental in unlocking new growth opportunities. 

Meghna Suryakumar, Founder and CEO of Crediwatch, discusses the role data insights and predictive analytics can play in solving some of the systemic challenges MSMEs face in fostering business resilience. 

Editor’s Pick: 100X Entrepreneur podcast

Rajdip Gupta, CEO and Founder of Route Mobile, believes that funding and investments are not must-haves for a startup to be successful. What's mandatory? Clear fundamentals and conviction about the products.

In this episode of 100X Entrepreneur Podcast, Rajdip talks more about starting up from scratch and the cloud communication platform’s journey to getting listed. Read more. 

Startup Spotlight

Transforming startup ideas to MVP in 12 weeks

After working for a myriad of IT companies, Naren Lokwani decided to startup on his own. In June 2019, he started an edtech startup Frshr Technologies in Bengaluru. Soon, he realised that a lot of startup founders are non-techies.

“We thought of helping the non-techie founders and help them build the software product or mobile app they dream of building. Frshr Technologies is a startup for startups,” says Naren. Read more.

News & Updates

• Google for Startups Accelerator (GFSA) has announced its fifth cohort in India. It includes 16 homegrown startups chosen out of 700 applications. The selected startups are from high-growth sectors like healthcare, fintech, social, education, agritech, electric mobility, and more.

• The government is committed to scaling up the network of incubators and accelerators massively over the next three years, Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said as he pledged the Centre's support for entrepreneurs and startups to grow to the next level.

• Flipkart said it is creating 4,000 jobs in Maharashtra by opening four new facilities. These fulfilment and sortation centres are located in Bhiwandi and Nagpur and are aimed primarily at supporting the local sellers in the state and cater to the growing demand for ecommerce.

• Samsung India has partnered with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) under a CSR initiative to train 50,000 young persons as job-ready for the electronics retail sector over the next few years.

Before you go, stay inspired with… 

“We are talking to 11 million developers across the planet, as best as we can, and that’s where our product development process is aligned. People like that, they share it, and we fundamentally come out far ahead, month after month, year after year.”

— Abhinav Asthana, Founder and CEO, Postman 

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