Cloudflare Outage: Nithin Kamath Highlights WhatsApp Kite Backup To Exit Positions

Nithin Kamath took to X and spotlighted that Zerodha users can use "WhatsApp Kite Backup" to exit positions, in case of system going down due to Cloudflare-like outages.

"Cloudflare powers approximately 20-25% of all internet traffic globally. It's the infrastructure behind millions of websites and apps—from content delivery and DDoS protection to DNS services. When Cloudflare has an outage, it doesn't just affect one company; it impacts a significant chunk of the internet simultaneously," the Zerodha co-founder posted.

Kamath said the global internet infrastructure provider experienced a brief outage that disrupted services for Kite, Zerodha’s trading platform, along with numerous other brokers, fintech platforms, and online services worldwide.

“Today, they had a brief outage that affected Kite along with numerous other brokers, fintech platforms, and online services worldwide. 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. Only a few thousand people used the WhatsApp service today,” he pointed out.

He added that Zerodha is actively working to reduce its dependency on Cloudflare to avoid similar disruptions in the future. “We're also actively working on reducing our dependency on Cloudflare. I'm really sorry for the inconvenience today,” Kamath wrote.

This comes after a widespread outage took down several major websites and online services across sectors on Friday, including search platforms, brokerages and design tools, before access gradually returned.

The disruption was traced back to issues at Cloudflare, which reported and resolved a service incident during the period. Perplexity, Groww, Zerodha and Downdetector were among the sites that went offline.

Platforms including Zoom, Shopify, Claude, Canva, LinkedIn and HDFC Bank experienced interruptions as well, according to Downdetector.