Postman Co-founder Abhijit Kane and BITS Pilani Celebrate a Partnership

We recently shared Postman’s exciting plans to launch the API Lab at BITS Pilani as part of our commitment to promoting API literacy amongst students and aspiring developers worldwide. On April 8th, we celebrated this partnership with the BITS Pilani community at the “AsPIring Transformation” event hosted by the BITS student body APOGEE (A Professions Oriented Gathering over Educational Experiences) team.

April 8th was a hot summer day in Rajasthan, India, with temperatures rising to 45℃ (113℉). But that didn’t stop hundreds of enthusiastic BITS Pilani students and faculty from coming together to join Postman Co-founder Abhijit Kane for the special occasion.

Fireside chat with Postman Co-founder Abhijit Kane

A memorable highlight of the event was a rare fireside chat with Abhijit, who is also a BITS Pilani alumnus. During the talk that was moderated by BITS Professor Jagat, students got an opportunity to interact with Abhijit and learn about his journey—from joining the very first batch of BITS Hyderabad campus graduates to becoming a co-founder and head of product, integrations, at Postman.

During the 30-minute chat, Abhijit answered questions from students and educators across all of the BITS campuses. The in-person talk was livestreamed so that students from all BITS Pilani campuses were able to attend remotely, and you can check out the video here.

In addition to sharing his own story, Abhijit also talked about the purpose of Postman Student Programs.

“How does one go from writing code in a file as a student to contributing to a large-scale project as a part of a bigger team?” he began, noting that what lies between individual development and building a finished product at scale can be a mystery to most. That’s where Postman’s educational initiatives come in.

“APIs are a key part of the answer,” he said, “and our student programs help students be better prepared for the industry with required resources.”

The day concluded with warm closing remarks from BITS faculty. Professor Sudhirkumar Barai, the director of BITS Pilani, called the event “a wonderful moment of joy for all of us at BITS Pilani.”

Postman Classroom Program hackathon winners

A key part of this ongoing partnership is the Postman Classroom Program, which launched its first cohort at all of the BITS Pilani campuses (at Pilani, Goa, Hyderabad, and Dubai) in November 2021. The Postman Classroom Program at BITS Pilani is designed to train and support educators incorporating APIs into their curriculum, and I’ve been the Postman Student Community Manager on the ground at BITS Pilani who’s been lucky enough to support and witness its launch.

The program has already proven a massive success, with more than 4,000 BITS students participating and earning the Postman Student Expert badge.

“The kind of effort which has gone into the Postman Classroom Program has already shown early success in helping BITSians reach greater heights,” said Professor Barai.

In advance of the “AsPIring Transformation” event, students from the program competed in the first-ever BITS Pilani Postman API Hackathon 1.0. Equipped with their new API superpowers gained during the Postman Classroom Program, participants tackled real-world challenges and, in a few short days, were able to build stunning full-stack applications using public APIs. Winners of the hackathon were announced at the April 8th gathering.

Check out the hackathon’s winning projects:

• Winner: funCharge
  An app to find nearby EV charging stations built using HERE Maps API and Open Charge API by Team ASP.
• Runner-up: CoinCompare
  An app to compare the prices of each cryptocurrency on different exchanges.
• Runner-up: EatHealthy
  A one-stop destination for food wellness built using the Spoonacular API and Google News API.

We’re just getting started

While the “AsPIring Transformation” event is over, this partnership is just getting started! We’re looking forward to the API Lab’s highly anticipated opening in December of 2022, and preparations are underway for more student cohorts across the BITS Pilani campuses. Keep an eye on the Postman blog for more updates throughout the year.

In the meantime, are you a student or educator interested in bringing the Postman Classroom Program to your campus? Drop us a note at [email protected].