Nexus-backed Postman pockets big Series B funding cheque

By Joseph Rai

  • 19 Jun 2019
Credit: Pixabay

Postdot Technologies Inc., which operates application programming interface testing platform Postman, has raised $50 million (around Rs 348 crore) in a Series B round of funding led by US-based venture capital firm CRV.

Existing investor Nexus Venture Partners, which had invested in the company in 2016, also participated in the funding round, Postman said in a statement.

The company will use the funds to accelerate its product roadmap, expand its commitment to helping customers leverage its products, and increase customer support.

The company was founded in 2014 by Abhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti and Abhijit Kane. It has more than 7 million users and helps support API development at more than 300,000 companies.

"Over the past couple of years, Postman has emerged as a true API development and testing platform and a very fast growing developer community," said Devdutt Yellurkar, general partner at CRV. Yellurkar has joined Postman’s board.

Founded in 1970, CRV is focused on investing at the Series A stage but it occasionally also makes seed and Series B investments, according to its website. 

CRV, formerly known as Charles River Ventures, has raised seventeen funds.

The venture capital firm's investments include social media platform Twitter, online education firm Udacity, customer service software company Zendesk, enterprise social network Yammer and application platform Airtable.

Nexus' US bets

Nexus has invested in over 75 startups focusing on consumer retail, business services, healthcare, education as well as enterprise technology, according to its website.

A large part of Nexus’ portfolio comprises startups based in the US having some Indian presence. The US team is led by co-founder Naren Gupta.

Nexus’ US bets include HyperTrack Inc., a startup that helps businesses track their executives and products in real time; Minio Inc., an open source-based cloud object storage startup; Druva Inc., an enterprise backup solutions provider; and Infoworks.io Inc, a data-warehousing company.

Notably, the US bets have worked as a hedge for Nexus against lack of exits from its India portfolio, according to a VCCircle analysis.

Last month, the homegrown venture capital firm received commitment from a few more Limited Partners for its fifth fund that has a target corpus of $450 million.