A widespread technical failure at global internet infrastructure giant Cloudflare triggered significant disruptions across India's tech-driven financial services sector on Friday. The outage, which lasted about an hour during the late trading session, impacted major brokerage platforms, hindering trade execution and cancellations on a day marked by heightened market activity due to the RBI policy announcement and weekend considerations.
Major Trading Platforms Grind to a Halt
The high-intensity outage affected some of the country's most prominent retail trading platforms. Zerodha, Groww, and Angel One were among the leading services that reported issues. According to market players, the problem primarily affected the web portals of most brokers, while tech-related issues with their dedicated mobile trading apps were relatively limited.
This incident marks the second major technical issue for Cloudflare in less than a month, a significant concern given the company powers an estimated 20-25% of global internet traffic. The timing was particularly unfortunate for Indian traders, as the disruption coincided with a period of higher-than-usual trading intensity.
Zerodha's WhatsApp Backup to the Rescue
In response to the crisis, Zerodha proactively directed its clients to use its WhatsApp-based backup channel for trading activities. Nithin Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, explained the situation on social media platform X (formerly Twitter).
"Today, (Cloudflare) had a brief outage that affected Kite along with numerous other brokers, fintech platforms, and online services worldwide," Kamath stated. Kite is the primary trading interface on Zerodha's platform.
He highlighted the importance of their contingency plan, adding, "This is why we built Kite Backup on WhatsApp. This system is independent of our primary systems. When external outages impact Kite, you can still exit your positions through WhatsApp." This backup mechanism provided a crucial alternative for users needing to manage their positions during the technical blackout.
Resolution and Market Impact
The technical glitch was resolved before the regular market closing time of 3:30 PM, but not before causing considerable inconvenience to active traders. The incident underscores the deep dependencies of modern financial ecosystems on external technology providers and the critical need for robust, independent backup systems.
For a sector that thrives on speed and reliability, such outages highlight vulnerabilities in the infrastructure. The event has sparked discussions on the necessity for financial platforms to further diversify their technological dependencies and strengthen fail-safe protocols to protect investors during unforeseen technical failures.
