Zerodha founder and chief executive Nithin Kamath explained on Friday how traders can continue to manage their positions even if Cloudflare, a service that handles roughly a quarter of global internet traffic, experiences an outage.
Kamath said Cloudflare’s vast footprint means any disruption can ripple across the internet, affecting “millions of websites and apps” at once. On Friday, a brief global slowdown hit several brokers and fintech platforms, including Zerodha’s Kite.
To ensure traders are not left stranded during such incidents, Zerodha has created a WhatsApp-based backup system that operates independently of its main infrastructure.
Why Cloudflare outages affect Kite
Kite’s web and mobile platforms rely on Cloudflare for security screening and DDoS protection. Every order placed by a user travels through the internet and is routed via Cloudflare before reaching Zerodha’s systems hosted on AWS.
Once processed, orders are transmitted to Zerodha’s order management system housed in physical data centres directly linked to stock exchanges. A Cloudflare disruption can therefore briefly block access to the platform even though Zerodha’s internal systems remain functional.
WhatsApp backup: How it works
Zerodha’s backup mode allows traders to exit their positions through WhatsApp when Kite becomes inaccessible due to an external outage.
The system is designed only for emergencies, particularly when both the Kite web and mobile app cannot be accessed during market hours.
Kamath stressed that the WhatsApp workflow is kept outside Zerodha’s primary tech stack, ensuring it remains reachable even if Cloudflare services are down.
Steps to access the backup system
To use the WhatsApp backup in case of an outage:
A safety net for ‘Disaster Scenarios’
Zerodha said the backup is intended to safeguard traders during rare but high-impact outages. With internet infrastructure heavily dependent on Cloudflare, a sudden disruption can affect multiple services simultaneously.
By offering an alternative channel through WhatsApp, Zerodha aims to give traders a way to manage risk even when the main platform is temporarily unreachable.
Kamath encouraged all users to store the backup number in advance so they can act swiftly if such a situation arises.
