An apology for the two consecutive tech issues in the last two months
In the business updates post I shared in August this year, I mentioned how we hadn’t had any large tech issues for a couple of years. Unfortunately, we have had two episodes in quick succession in the last two months, affecting between 5 and 20% of our active customers.
As a broker, we have multiple external dependencies. To name a few:
-
- Exchanges and depositories
- Data centres: physical & cloud
- Leased lines for connectivity between exchanges and data centres
- Our Execution Management System (EMS) vendor
- Cloudflare for SSL
The issues on Nov 6th and Dec 4th were triggered due to edge cases with our external dependencies. This is no excuse, and I understand that, as a platform, we are responsible for all the issues you face. But I wanted to share with you what went wrong and what we are doing about it.
The Nov 6th issue was due to an unscheduled update in the anti-malware monitoring service from our EMS vendor, which started throttling our servers. You can check the detailed RCA here.
Yesterday’s issue seems to be because of an exponentially larger number of customer password reset requests that caused login issues. On Monday morning, the system that notifies users of logins from new geographical locations based on IP addresses sent out an unexpectedly large number of alerts. We discovered that this was the result of an increase in the geo-location accuracy of the IP/geo-location database that we use. A routine update of this database happened over the weekend. We believe this led to a large influx of password reset requests from confused users, putting a strain on our login systems and resulting in login failures. We will share a detailed RCA on the disclosure page soon.
We now have put in place fixes to ensure these types of cases don’t affect our platform in the future. While we continuously put a lot of effort into ensuring all types of scenarios are factored in proactively, it is impossible for any technology platform to cover all edge cases. A large number of users attempting to reset their passwords due to a notification triggered by an increase in IP geolocation accuracy was one of those scenarios. Please be assured that, as a team, we are doing whatever we can to ensure the platform’s stability.
Social media has been a double-edged sword for us. We have significantly benefited from it since it made interacting with our customers easier and helped spread the word about our business. But the flip side is that we get a disproportionate number of tweets on a day like yesterday compared to the issue. On a normal day, we receive about 3500 to 4000 customer tickets, and about 10 lakh users trade daily. Yesterday, we had about 7700 tickets, an increase of about 4000. We believe that ~10% of active users faced disruptions intermittently for about 30 minutes. I am in no way saying this to minimise the issues traders faced, but just to highlight that we have a younger and more vocal online audience. Given that the markets moved significantly, there was a lot of interest from non-transacting users logging in to check their portfolios, making the disruption seem much larger than otherwise.
Once again, I want to assure you that the stability and reliability of the platform are our top priorities. We are working hard towards that in whatever way possible. We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience to those who were affected. If there have been any losses due to the incidents, create a ticket, and our team will try to get back to you as soon as possible with the best way to resolve them.
Sorry again,
Your assurance dated 5th Dec 2023 has no value. Again we are facing the issue today. You are also not compensating the losses due to your technical issue.
Hi Shruthi,
Thanks for your response.
Hoping the ticket 20240509531335 will get resolved this time at least after 1 Month.
Hi Shruti,
The below is your reply. But Still i am able to trade in Commodity. But my Ticket is closed without resolution second time.
Request your assistance.
Shruthi says:
May 24, 2024 at 10:45 am
Hi, we’re getting this checked. You will have an update on your ticket.
Hi, we’re sorry to hear this. Getting this checked. Someone from our team will reach out to you shortly.
I have raised a ticket for re activate my demand account 20240509531335 on May 9th.
But that has not been resolved.
First they simply closed my ticket as resolved .
Then after continuous calls now again made it to processing but same status last 10 days.
Frustrated with support by zerodha.
Hi, we’re getting this checked. You will have an update on your ticket.
Hi Nitin ji,
Have recently joined Zerodha and feeling happy to get a long relationship in stocks with you.
The web app interface must be looked on as it complicates within the same window. I never knew about your kite interface – it needs an Visibility architect who can design it to help end user. I am still trying to understand it but we need to understand Web Browser and Mobile app are different.
The web Browsers have features of multiple tabs which is not so used in your Kite Web – the stock analysis would be much better if each stock could be opened in other tab – only the graph is allowed which is not sufficient – all the technical details should also be there without any popup buttons.
Time is which makes you to take decisions – here all the time is consumed in looking for popup or buttons for the details.
Hope you get my point.
Regards
SS Bhogal
Why Zerodha website crashes down frequently in any browsers, be it running on either Google chrome or Edge browsers. I am trading in Zerodha for the past 1 year, and facing issues always.. looks like Its a high time to switch over to other platform.
Hi Yogish, we’re sorry about this. Could you please create a ticket on: https://support.zerodha.com/ with details of the issue, so we can have this resolved at the earliest?
@nithin: Please check support ticket #20230825668759, and see the state of affairs.
Hi, we see that our team has already responded to your ticket. Please login to support.zerodha.com and check. For further assistance, you can reply to the same ticket.
Nitin,
Are you aware that the team that answers tickets is extremely un-knowledgeable and it seems they are highly unskilled, almost like being placed there just to slow down the customer service process, hoping that the customer eventually either forgets the issue reported or just resigns to the situation.
Please feel free to lookup my tickets and I am positive you will agree with me, at least privately.
Hi Sam, we’re sorry to hear this. Could you please share your ticket numbers so we can check this?
Hi Nithin,
I saw the bulletin and post for 4th dec outage. I don’t think the issue has been acknowledged properly. I was already logged in on the web, and faced “503 Service unavailable” intermittently for at least 10-15 minutes. During this time I was also not able to modify or create baskets.
I see your tech team has drilled down the RCA to just login, I am super sure that the issue impacted other activities beyond login/marketwatch.
I am not aware of Zerodha architecture, but if login servers are isolated then other activities should continue as normal, unless the same login servers are queried again on backend to authenticate every request. If this is the case then in a way everything is impacted and we should refrain from saying that just login was impacted.
Unknown outages are not under our control, but inability to handle extra traffic is a bad pattern. In today’s world where companies’ infra is hosted on cloud, capacity is scaled in a couple of minutes.
Most of the companies that I have worked for have infra which is usually provisioned to handle 2x traffic at least.
I am hoping that Zerodha will look into it and perform a better RCA and work on the infra to handle such cases. It would be great if you can share the learnings publicly.
I would like to express my concern regarding the recent performance of the Zerodha app, which has been quite problematic lately. Today, I encountered a situation where the app became unresponsive for 3 to 4 minutes, leading to the failure of my stop loss execution. Consequently, I incurred a significant loss of 30,000, which is a substantial amount for me.
I am reaching out to inquire whether there is a possibility of recovering this amount from Zerodha, given that the issue was attributed to a technical glitch. This incident is notthe first occurrence, and it marks the first time I have experienced such a substantial loss due to app malfunctions. I would greatly appreciate any information on the potential for a refund and hope that measures are being taken to address and rectify these technical issues in the app. Your assistance in this matter would be highly valued.
The response/comment marked earlier is deleted as it cannot be sighted. The Post/chronology/explanation is good and honest. So is the recommendation to ‘Create a Ticket’. Yes, Ticket(s) have been created for effected accounts and Zerodha team has reverted with IBT guidelines. With perusal of these guidelines, its clear that NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE for such failures or any other financial losses be it broker, NSE/BSE or Internet provider. So if there is a detailed explanation on failure and IBT guidelines so seriously backs any failures then Why ask for Ticket Creation. To further strengthen Zerodha case, the Support Team is asking for supporting document and relevant details for case review – For What!!! The systems failed, client could not carry out transaction for 35-45 minutes, systems restored and client did liquidation more out of frustration, anxiety and uncertainty fear. Opportunities of vice versa situation (buy/sell or sell/buy) were lost and there is no documentation for that. Zerodha has all the records of what client could not liquidate vs what client liquidated and they can take a factual call based on second to second movement of those positions during downtime phase. If revised contracts with STT could be sent later then a similar stuff could have been done for Positions as well. The losses are big due to missing of planned targets, notional profit or opportunity loss on a seriously eventful day. Zerodha had no planned BCP/DR to safeguard customer. Failure of Web & Mobile together is serious. Yes, IBT guidelines have come handy to protect Zerodha. Preserving a screenshot so that post is not removed this time. Will still appreciate Zerodha for putting a detailed professional note.
Have lost about 2.5 lacs on the investments due your glitches. I need to know how are you going to make up for it?
Hi Shahid, we’re sorry to hear this. Could you please create a ticket and someone from our team will reach out to you.
Hi Shahid, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
First of all Kudos to you for making apology (making fool) to your customers by giving an unrealistic explanation of the issues and putting the blame on technology and external dependencies. I come from technology background and do not agree with your justification for the system failure here is it why :-
1. exponentially larger number of customer password reset requests that caused login issues – Do you even understand what does it mean “exponentially” ??. and practically why large customer will reset the password at the time of transactions ? this is a sheer lie. You can make fool to other customers but not the customer who come from technical background. Do you even have evidence of this or just words like exponential and large numbers ?
2. Simply putting the blame on other dependencies is very easy. I believe there must be integrations with other platform. why does it not work ?? why does it fail again and again .
3. There was another issue occurred too which is not mentioned here. iPhone users encountered issue while transaction.
I lost my 25000 because of your so called technical issue. You are dealing with money with such an unprofessional attitude. And your apology is just a mockery like door darshan ” Rukawat ke liye khed hai” . This is our hard earned money, we are investor who prefer to invest and grow our money in a right way thru trading and people like you who make money from us and then make us loose our money by such incidents.
If you are really sorry then compensate the loss occurred to each and every investor by making a payment respective to their invested money. But I am sure you wont do that. You are simply taking advantage of undefined and unclear rules on India. Keep earning Mr Nitin Kamath but money earned is such manner wont last for long …remember BYJU’s.
Thank you for the update. As far as the same mistakes or edge case are not repeating, we are good.
One suggestion though,
Before crucial days like December 4th election results and like wise other important days which are already known to market participants we should defer any updates to rollout.
Hi Team Z,
While everybody would appreciate that you team is continuously putting efforts, losses and opportunity losses incurred by several users due to system unavailability during mkt opening hours can not be ignored.
2 incidents in very short duration interval indicates some level of infrastructure inadequacy, if not then some level of complacency setting in. Explanation or RCA talks about some events triggering system overloads and eventually customer sufferings.
I am not an expert but general sense says that Sr. Management needs to look into it..tks
Thank you. Appreciate the transparency.
As an engineer involved in building backend systems, I can understand the amount of work and rigour that generally goes in, to generate such summarised version of what went wrong.
While I wasn’t affected monetarily, I find it good to learn about technical nitty gritty of the platform that I primarily use for my investment needs.
This is what Nithin and his team does best, come online and write a carefully crafted piece with his apologies.
This is what it is till Zerodha breaks down next time.
I am amazed at the Kudos people are showering up on him for being Transparent and apologetic.
I mean he is a service provider and charging a fee for it and he is no longer at the advantage of being the lowest charging, his distinction comes from the platform he provides.
Off late they are either taking it for granted or they are too immersed in themselves that they are not willing to make much investment in their core business.
They are what they are because of Zerodha and they must put in their heart and soul back at it and fix it and ensure that it won’t break down again because of any BS reason.
IF they have the user base, they must upgrade the infrastructure to cater to it.
Ideally you should have enough servers provisioned to handle 2x of the peak load that you had seen recently. Also you should have some backup to run some of your software in on-demand third party cloud service providers such as AWS, Azure, GCP etc., Whenever your own servers are overloaded you should fall back to third party cloud servers to handle such load spikes.
Anyways Zerodha is making a lot of profits. Why not invest a part of that profit in upscaling the software, hardware and server infrastructure? In short, you should invest in making your software and hardware systems more robust.
And please don’t judge the scale of the issue just from number of tickets you received. For example, I faced the issue on Dec 4th. But I never raised any ticket. And I never posted anything on social media. On Dec 4th it was not just the login issue. For me I was able to login, but the orders and GTTs were not getting updated properly (Chrome inspect showed, I was getting some 4xx or 5xx http errors). I got scared due to this issue, closed all the positions and didn’t trade for the rest of the day.
If you believe 5-20% is the right metric of affected users, then I am pretty sure your team is measuring it wrong. So please fix the analytics system as well. If you don’t believe me, just randomly choose 100 active traders (ppl who generally place atleast 20 orders between 9:15am to 9:45am on a average monday morning) and ask them if they faced any issues with Zerodha on Dec 5th. I am sure, you will get a much higher percentage.
I understand these issues are mainly caused by the updates to your IP/geo-location database and anti-malware servers, but why are these updates directly done on production environment?
Don’t you have lower environments which you can update and test for issues?
If proper testing is carried out, I think you could have avoided these issues.
Anyways, thank you for sharing. Good learning for a performance tester.
I had incurred around 2.5 Lakh loss because of this problem..
I could not login for around 1 hour.
Unfortunately this problem happened during initial hours when all the stocks were trading high and wanted to sell.
Hi Sathish, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Fine with all details, but who will be responsible for financial losses due to these technical issues.
Thanks.
Today it’s clear to all that there is no doubt on transparency, sincerity & honesty of Kamath brothers & their Zerodha team, but during the last 6 years I have seen that on the days of huge market volatility, possibility of facing technical glitch by Zerodha is on the higher side. Why we react, you know, that we think Zerodha is the best trading platform of our country, miles ahead of it’s peers, providing the world best technological support to retail traders at minimum cost and that’s why we expect to see the shadows of Azim Premji’s Wipro or Narayana Murty’s Infosys exponential growth saga in Zerodha as well in future who will contribute to the Indian capital market growth story to a really large extent in order to make it the 3rd largest economy of the world from it’s present budding stage ! So, come on Team Zerodha, you have to be on the apex flawlessly.
Abhi bhi problem ho rha h Bhai Mera me login krte hi log out ho ja rha
Iske kaar 5 lakh ka loss bhi Lena pda humko
Technical problem occurred. Losses n gains resulted. It is to be noted that no system is error or trouble free. NSE also faced technical issue. As far as my experience n knowledge is concerned NO OTHER BROKER OR PLATFORM IS AS GOOD AS ZERODHA. STILL THIS IS BEST PLATFORM N LOVED BY MOST TRADERS.
Dear Sir,
On 4 Dec, due to login issues I couldn’t trade on the time and that day a chance to book profit due to my analysis. But it couldn’t possible due to login issue….
Could you please give us confidence this will not be come again after election in 2024? I’m sure we will survive with same issue but by that time you’ll be having different technical explanation.
Hello Guys, Always use hedging while option trading. GTT for Equity. Thanks.
Use MIS (Intraday) to trade all option strikes with no position conversion (MIS to NRML).
This will act as a risk management check, ensuring you don’t hold any losing intraday positions overnight. NRML buy orders are blocked for this strike price due to open interest (Ol) limits prescribed by SEBI. You can exit existing positions or place NRML buy orders between 46600 – 47000.
These kind of restrictions can we remove ?
Handling financial instruments is a serious subject; the comparison between apologizing for a social media error and a system failure during a period of high volatility doesn’t fully convey the seriousness of the situation. It’s more like a slap followed by a casual sorry, which doesn’t sit well.
I get that predicting market volatility isn’t a walk in the park, but certain events are foreseeable. Every time there’s a significant market event, your system seems to take a hit. It’s not like a pandemic; it’s a predictable situation.
Even a novice can see that sudden spikes in volatility might occur from events like election results and corporate results (such as the RBI speech, repo rate, and inflation data), and your system should be prepared to handle them.
On Saturdays and Sundays, when global markets experience significant reactions, it has been observed that on Mondays, when the Indian market is poised for synchronization, your system tends to encounter crashes. It’s essential to be well-prepared for such heightened volatility. Every global event, whether it be a conflict, election, or any occurrence impacting the markets directly or indirectly, should be anticipated to ensure the system’s resilience.
Failovers: A failover is a backup operation that automatically takes over in the event that the primary system or process fails. The purpose of failovers is to minimize downtime and ensure continuous operation, even in the face of unexpected failures
Mirror them 1:1: The term “mirror” in this context means that the failover processes are exact replicas or duplicates of the primary processes. The “1:1” ratio emphasizes a direct correspondence between the primary and backup systems. In other words, each process has a dedicated failover process that is identical in functionality and configuration.
This indicates that your OMS requires a significant update and demonstrates your sincerity in a market that is characterized by extreme volatility by upgrading it when it reaches failure
Rather than an apology, like a mature firm, they should state that they will pay the full order amount and incur no brokerage fee on the day of system breakdown in order to prevent future mistakes.
If a company asserts that they prioritize transparency, it is imperative that their actions align with this claim.
What about the opportunities and the money we lost due to your glitch which seems to be very common nowadays . Zerodha will loose a significant amount of users including me for sure.
This 2nd time in a month.
Due to your technical issues we can’t close our Trades.
You are loosing your faith due to this type failures.
This is the stock market, there is no forgiveness, there is direct punishment,As you are apologizing but you can pay for the loss caused by your mistake because you are earning a lot because of us.Your company is in profit because of us.So there is no apology compensation is the only solution.Marketmen sabes kimati cheese viswas hai chip people can not afford it
@Nithin Kamath and team, For option trader of bank nifty 4th December 2023 start session was biggest opportunity which was missed. Sorry mean nothing missed high profit probability trade is loss. I hope this does not happen at high probability, high profit time.
High probability due to FII turned to positive inflow from last two months, good election results, successful IPO in last few days, Nifty was already all time high but bank nifty was dragging and I was 100% certain, of this rally not sure how high but high enough. BUT i understand, from trading point of view, this morning trade was important which was missed. A missed opportunity is indirect loss, your sorry but for me it changes nothing but biggest missed high probability opportunity.
Ask any bank nifty option trader was 4th December 2023 was high probability and high profit chance.
Really disappointed,
HOPE this does not happen again at such high probability of profit time.
Thanks, this has taught me that, if something is important, it must be insured that there is some alternative or backup.
Regards
Harshal
Salute to CEO who has accepted the issue. I know that you are adding efforts to strengthen the system.
Zerodha is the best app.
Hope that Zerodha will not take any action.. Keep it up buddy. You will do it.
Handling financial instruments is a serious subject; the comparison between apologizing for a social media error and a system failure during a period of high volatility doesn’t fully convey the seriousness of the situation. It’s more like a slap followed by a casual sorry, which doesn’t sit well.
I get that predicting market volatility isn’t a walk in the park, but certain events are foreseeable. Every time there’s a significant market event, your system seems to take a hit. It’s not like a pandemic; it’s a predictable situation.
Even a novice can see that sudden spikes in volatility might occur from events like election results and corporate results (such as the RBI speech, repo rate, and inflation data), and your system should be prepared to handle them.
On Saturdays and Sundays, when global markets experience significant reactions, it has been observed that on Mondays, when the Indian market is poised for synchronization, your system tends to encounter crashes. It’s essential to be well-prepared for such heightened volatility. Every global event, whether it be a conflict, election, or any occurrence impacting the markets directly or indirectly, should be anticipated to ensure the system’s resilience.
Failovers: A failover is a backup operation that automatically takes over in the event that the primary system or process fails. The purpose of failovers is to minimize downtime and ensure continuous operation, even in the face of unexpected failures
Mirror them 1:1: The term “mirror” in this context means that the failover processes are exact replicas or duplicates of the primary processes. The “1:1” ratio emphasizes a direct correspondence between the primary and backup systems. In other words, each process has a dedicated failover process that is identical in functionality and configuration.
This indicates that your OMS requires a significant update and demonstrates your sincerity in a market that is characterized by extreme volatility by upgrading it when it reaches failure
Please don’t create such a problem as it causes a lot of losses. Be careful retail traders
Doesn’t matter wat was the issue as a service provider your job is to build a robust system for the users malware update Av update all these are run on pre schedule time there must be some human error which couse this and now days Server load is not an acceptable accuse when there is load banalncer scalability kind of services avilabale for web servers cloude or local hosted data centres…
Sir i am using zerodha from 2020, and i opened account in zerodha bcoz at that time zerodha was no 1 position in market,
But from 1 year i am facing lots of issues in app and web site also, chart is not loading, server error, invalid OTP, sir its my request plz solve this issue as soon as posible.
We trust zerodha. And want to go many years with zerodha.
Hi Mohammad, we’re sorry about this. Could you please create a ticket on: https://support.zerodha.com/ with details of the issue, so we can have this resolved at the earliest?
I have experienced both these glicthes and have suffered loss both the time in these 2 glitch.
U people say sorry and wind it off.
Can i ever say sorry for my trades in loss and not pay the brokerage..
Is it acceptable?
I’d you are charging it please keep it worth it.
Hi, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Hii
4 dec my money gone because Zerodha I’m very sad for these response pls give me my money back coz I’m very poor also belong poor family thank you zerodha i nedd your help really
Thank you ….
Yours
—kunal
Hi Zerodha, from technical perspective, yes we all face issues. No platforms are smoother always. As you know, your server loads are increasing everytime, and we end up facing the issues on a busy day when markets tend to go one way.
I hope these are physical servers, there are very good physical servers which can handle millions of transactions, but have you given a thought of migrating to Cloud by any chance? At the end of the day, you can only apologize, but the money gone is gone.
Dear Zerodha Team,
That is not acceptable at all,
Can’t take any new postion, and can’t exit my trades,
Who is responsible for the loss?
I was not able going beyond login but 503 error coming for me always. It was more then 30 min i have faced the issue
It was bad experience for me.
i was not able to see any stock not able to buy/sell anything this impact me a lot I have incurred 10 thousand loss due this issue
Hi Vishal, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
All said and done this just proves what it takes to maintain and run a popular service at this scale. I can understand a person who is in the devops domain but as a end user was yesterday.
A clarification note fm founder is a relief, reassuring n trust building to all, feels proud to be ur customer
its cool bro.. keep up the good work 🙂
I want to discuss one more major problem that whenever we have taken large position and want to execute them we can,t so this the major problem so please correct them properly by huge respect
Thank you
Hi Sagar, we’re sorry about this. Could you please create a ticket here with details of the issue, so we can have this resolved at the earliest?
“Yesterday’s issue seems to be because of an exponentially larger number of customer password reset requests that caused login issues.”
“We believe this led to a large influx of password reset requests from confused users, putting a strain on our login systems and resulting in login failures.”
Can you please share the approx. number of requests you received. Its bit difficult for me to digest this has lead to an issue of such a magnitude. Not everyone resets the password on receiving “login from new location” alert!
Dear Zerodha founder 🙏 I want to tell you that this technical error is very harmful for those who earned money by harder way and want grow his money by some investment and tradings I am also a trader This technical issue happend with me by many times and I was frustrated from it so please correct this glitches properly
Because we Faith on Zerodha
Thank you
Dekho yaar baat simple gussa iss liye dikhate kyun ki pyar bhi tumse hi karte hai😂😂no problem we love and support team zerodha
If and only Mr Kamath is reading this:
I am amused by this. It’s fine systems have issues – it’s beyond one’s control. But the parties involved / both affected and responders are human. Due to the glitch my positions that I wanted to sell got bought within a span of 30 minutes. When I wrote to the customer support, the guy nonchalantly responded there were no issues and system worked perfectly.
While I will accept the system failure, I cannot accept the human side of handling things. The guy whoever replied never did any investigation on my attachment and issues. Just copy pasted a their knowledge portal answer for customer quires. Very poor from the standard they set up for themselves. Now who will bear this loss? Mr Kamath?
Ticket number : 20231205455550
Hi, we’re extremly sorry about this. We’re checking your ticket. You will have an update at the earliest.
Who are the resposible for losses in that time.
Whatever it may be we had face problem and we loss some amount due to technical issue
Firstly would like to appreciate the gesture of accepting the fault,
And yes, I too definitely faced the issue many a times yesterday I had to reset the password , it was.not getting logged , and I had banknifty positions, fortunately could get in , in time so didn’t make loss , but please avoid such kind of techno errors. Sometimes it becomes difficult to get out from such position.
Due to the persistent login issues and the consequent loss of Rs. 75,000, I’ve made the decision to discontinue trading in Futures and Options (F&O) with Kite. The challenges faced with accessing my account and the lack of effective resolution from customer support have eroded my trust in the platform. It’s crucial for a trading platform to offer seamless access and responsive customer service, and unfortunately, Kite has fallen short in these aspects. I’ve opted to explore alternative platforms that provide a more reliable and supportive trading experience.
Hi Vipin, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I have faced issues first time since 2019 i started trading on zerodha, but the issue can cost some body irreparable losses, so zerodha should take it seriously. and for the first time i switched to another broker
Zerodha should give discount in trading fee to compensate the losses of account holders
Both of you have earned so much money through this app, doing podcasts, and talking about 100 of crores like they are nothing to you. I am sure both of you have worked very hard to reach this status. Couple of grands or even a lakh doesn’t mean anything to you but for me that amount matters, An opportunity like in the morning of the 4 December 2023 comes very rare. And your technical glitch results in missing that rare opportunity, and couldn’t sell my shares or take a position at the right moment, which cost money. So sorry to say that sir, but your sorry doesn’t give me even a little satisfaction. I have generated tickets on the matter but your customer support is giving me already typed reply. Which is disappointing at many levels. I know it doesn’t matter whatever i say here or if i keep complaining, nothing is going to happen. You will only give me already typed copy pasted reply.
I have just started this online trading, still in learning phase so this trading had already cost me a huge loss. So Nitin Sir in place of sorry or covering my losses , if you can arrange me an opportunity to learn few tips on how to trade, and if you can arrange me an opportunity where i can see some live trading of some experts or even learn a few things. I will be very happy and will accept your sorry with all my heart. If I’ll get an opportunity to learn something from you or from anyone you suggest. I am from Uttar Pradesh but I’ll go wherever you suggest.
Thank you if you have read this message. And sorry if i have said something wrong.
Hi Dhirendra, extremly sorry to hear this. Having this checked. You will have an update on the ticket at the earliest.
I had PE trades and I was planning to give it off immediately on opening of the market. I have incurred huge loss close to 80000/- because of the technical issue. I feel that my passion to do trading is once for all shutdown. Can you please guide me what to do after this?
Hi Malathy, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I have been hearing 5his same issue from past few years. Always reason is unsuall traffic load on servers. What kind of company are you? Take some money out of the profits and build more capable servers to handle these unexpected loads.
Also kindly look into my support ticket 20231106509743 since past 1 month my 150000rs is stuck with zerodha and youll are not providing refund of my funds.
Hi Joe, extremly sorry to hear this. Hvaing this checked. You will have an update on the ticket at the earliest.
More than 30 min spent to login in the account. Every time I was asked to put Password and Id but every time it shows wrong user id or Password. At I have to change the password and the web allow to login.
I was affected user of the login issue on Dec 04, did zerodha send an update to its users about weekend update planned for so called ‘geo-location accuracy of the IP/geo-location database’ update, and informed its users about unexpected login issue expected on Dec 04 on worst case???…and is zerodha is doing that so called ‘geo-location accuracy of the IP/geo-location database – update’ for the first time????!!!!!!!
I have faced issues first time since 2019 i started trading on zerodha, but the issue can cost some body irreparable losses, so zerodha should take it seriously. and for the first time i switched to another broker
What about the people who lost thousands of money?
Nikhil Kamath
Owning up to technical snags and sharing the RCA displays the transparency and ethical ways of operating at zerodha .
If anything this article has increased my faith in zerodha .
Way to go ! More power to you and your team .
happy customer
Niraj
Dear Nithin,
Here the question is,why would zerodha try to gain mare client base if the servers capacity can’t even handle the logins of the clients
Only opology is not sufficient sir.Someone should take responsibility of money loss due to technology failure. Disclaimer in terms and conditions is not the thing that covers all for any reliable broker.
Absolutely right 👍
What’s good in apology and explanation….. When money and life is on stake nothing works.. u make money by commissions … A good apology would be to donate that days commision in charity and update ur application…..
Zerodha is requested to learn from past experiences of such instances & improve system. Also 2 stage authentication can be done using OTP + Authenticator code , in place of compulsory kite login on mobile app.
But due to this i lost about 10000/- in the trade . This is unacceptable.
Hi, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Hi,
Well this is a live market and members would definitely like to make their profits when the market is at all-time high…..your app is supposed to have 100% uptime specially when it’s live for only a certain time frame. You get paid by all your members to keep this up when it matters. Giving excuses or explanations looks very naive.
30 mins recovery time is huge. You need to have skilled technical team to handle this.
Unscheduled update how it happened during market hrs. You need to send them legal notice and recover traders losses.
Now a days technology is more advanced and such issues can be solved. Load balancing is very important in cloud platform and u need to appoint people who can handle this issue properly.
4000 tickets increase to 7000 tickets is not an excuse. Even on normal days, we don’t get reply within time.
Getting customers is easy but maintain those customers is difficult.
30 mins recovery time, just think how many customers loose how much money. Is there any solution for this?
Thank you for posting a detailed reply. I have gotten used to not getting any replies on queries from big companies which is an endemic problem in India wherein customer complaints do not get due diligence of the law.
Inspite of the same you went ahead and posted a reply. Thanks zerodha.
At this moment I will share another instance where I needed tech support from Zerodha I was promptly replied with an appropriate response.
Your reply continues to ingrain my belief in you.
Thanks again.
Suggestion: Tried to use the Call-and-trade facility but since both Web n Mobile applications were unresponsive could not provide the Support code that it was asking for. Now, this is something that can surely be resolved.
Because of this issue I lost 28k as I could not login to square off my positions it’s really bad and I use streak to automate both didn’t work
If your servers not capable of handling the load why are you tagged as No. 1 broker!!!
From your sorry, I can not recover my loss…
I lost my 20k due to this error.
Who is taking responsibility for my loss?
Hi Akshay, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I faced same problem. I didn’t login at 9.20 am on 4 December 2023. I didn’t buy and sell any stocks. Very Bad Thing.Do not repeat in future.
It is shocking to know that Login and password change load effecting
critical activity like Order Placement and position streaming. it is supposed to be
two different loads. Although Zerodha has robust platform and numerous facilities
and innovative people they must insure minimal downtime of there systems
(at least server issues where they say Un scheduled Antivirus updates or Wrong Geo Location detection
it seems like a joke in the era where companies guaranty 99.9% uptime for there servers and fail overs)
I used trading platform of several top stock brokers and they also have several issues but they never accepted it, even they hide always their mistake blaming interest speed, exchange or any other factor.
I was also faced same issue, i was more disturbed then, I couldn’t not able to understand what should I do then,
The financial loss that happens due to these kind of issues and that too in F&O has to be borne by us.it is our money right. It is not an accounting entry or a sales invoice or any other transaction that gets affected. This is like cutting power to an OT room when major operation is going on. As an org you will not loose anything .come out with RCa
Request to add a column in the kite portfolio that should mention the number of days from when we are holding the stock.
If it is added it will be highly appreciated.
What about the losses we get during that technical issue?
At that time i am buying call of banknifty and the app is crashed and i am not exit of the call and i am getting the loose who is responsible for this?
Why you are not checking service before the market start and if you have problem you can shut down your app before market and inform to everyone this is your responsibility.
That is the wrost application
Hi Naveen, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
The time was very crucial when Zerodha kite app facing such issue!
That market was going up, so therefore I am unable to book the trade with good profit!
Hope in future we not facing such issues!
Dear Team – Zerodha,
Please analyze all failures and failures which you have not imagined and correct the system upfront. Correcting post failure is more disastrous rather than deployment of preventive measures imagining possible failures
There is a tool called FMEA Failure Mode and Effect Analysis. Please use this for bringing better governance and customer experience
It was really scary situation, I was worried if my credentials are hacked or what.
Suggestion: Whenever such glitch happens, you should charge your vendors the losses and refund the same + brokerage to your customers as a token of appreciatin.
Thank you
Always problem for technical and we loss to much money because of Zerodha
And in the last 6 months the candle price and screen price did not match, ex, we wanted to buy @ 101, and after trade executed when we see candle it was 99/100
So how it’s trade executed?
Some time day high low even not match, when I complain she said from Exchange problem not from Zerodha,
True I also felt the same while using zherodha.
Hi Ghanshyam, the price of your order sometimes might not showon the charts due to the unavailability of tick-by-tick data. We’ve explained this in detail here.
Hi, I hv been a daily user of your platform for 2 yrs or so, never had any login issue but yes on some occasions it takes more time to load charts on various time duration, I am not sure if it is from ur end or net speed at my end. Please clarify to me.
Though not tech person myself, may I suggest you to test your systems considering all your customers (& not just active customers) login and punch in orders simultaneously. Hope it helps.
I like the sincerity of the team Zerodha. I appreciate them because they had boldly apologized without creating a lame excuse. The cause of the problem is explained in details without hiding anything. I thanks Zerodha for their integrity in maintaining a highly transparent platform. Thank you Zerodha.
Biometric attendence was not possible .
Trying to login bt OTP not received
But
Today all issue solved.
Thanks To all team 🙏
I could not trail my position and end up booking small as it got triggered when I couldn’t access the system. Who is responsible for my loss. And what severance I can get for my loss?
This was totally unacceptable and i lost huge because of this
I no longer want to be part of zerodha,
Worst part is when i complained to your team they said we are sorry and no app is glitch free and you have accepted during terms and conditions that any kind of glitches they are not responsible for it.
Hence i will raise this issue in scores and i no longer want to be part of broker where glitches happen now and then and we are risking our money..
Hi Shridhar, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Wasn’t expected from Zerohdha..
I was not able to sell my flair holding of 45 share on December 4 and it when it got logged then seller pack was there, so couldn’t sell on that day. Then I sold those 45 share holding today, 5 December in 393.90 rs. I got loss because of your technical issue. Kindly revert and compensate.
Hi Ishitva, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I am not impacted much..and i understand the dependency and the pressure.but please find a solution. Apriciate your explanation
But there is no excuse for losses we suffered…we were just panic all the positions were about to reach the target and suddenly something happens.u r just useless u r just playing with our money, anything untoward should not happen at any point.least have any other ways out .trying for web and it is saying put ur app code how can we have a app code when there,the app is not opening? u r just seating and apologizing ,it’s of no use,my whole positions whent negative ,my targets were all achieved and came back in negative had faced huge losses.mo other broker is facing this kind of problem.ur apology can’t give back our profits and hard earned money…we r actually fools to continue with hhe broker like this and risk our hard earn money…useless zerodha..
Hi, we’re sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I am exited position on profit booking time , but that that time app isn’t working, so now am loosing my money upto 1100. It’s bad for me. Same issue before last weak… please resolve this issue as soon as possible and given my loosing capital. Refund to me as well.Refund my money. Frofit booking time it’s working
Hi Nandkishor, we’re sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
When we do web login, mobile application code is asked for, you can revise the request to do verification sms and mail code.
Hi, you can log in to Kite web without an App Code by requesting OTP via SMS and email by clicking “Problem with Mobile App Code”. You can also set-up TOTP using external apps which can also be installed on a desktop/laptop. You can check the process here.
I am daily using Zerodha App since last 08 months but never seen login issue. I am surprised that our friends faced some login issue and it is accepted by CEO of organization. Generally such types of issues never accepted by other organizations & they put blame on network issue etc. Salute to CEO who has shown courage and accepted the issue. I welcome that efforts being put for further to strengthen the system.
Weldone Zerodha. Keep it up.
I agree with you. I m using it from few year and my experience is good. Thanks to Kamath Brothers we are getting good service.
We get relief from high looter brokers because of Zerodha.
While I loved the way you took accountability of the problem and wrote the above post, I don’t agree with the following statement.
“Given that the markets moved significantly, there was a lot of interest from non-transacting users logging in to check their portfolios, making the disruption seem much larger than otherwise.”
I think your system should be ready for all the users specially during market hours. Non-transacting users pay the same maintenance fee as that of heave-transacting users.
Namaste
You are good job. But of late at least last 1 years your support team has been unable to sort out my query and keep closing the ticket without solving but saying it is solved. It is a matter for concern as maybe in future such callous approach to customer service with lead to closure of Zerodha and our shares may be lost.
Hi, sorry to hear this. We’re checking this and will have someone from our team reach out to you.
it’s a practice at ZERODHA that your support team has been unable to sort out my query and keep closing the ticket without solving but saying it is solved. Are you still trustworthy.
Due to this glitch we retail investors suffered huge losses.. kindly check for some compensation for our losses. Since company has insurance compensation will not be a issue
It is not expected of Zerodha to come up with such issues in view of the Trust it has built with community.
Kindly look at your user base and what%age of users are asked for password reset. How much deviation it had from normal days.
I think Servers could not handle the customer traffic anticipated due to Election results which medua had predicted a day before that lot of buying will happen on Monday.
Need to evaluate how such crashes can be avoided going forward.
Offen seen that charts are not refreshing on real time & needs to be refreshed manually.
Hi Sunil, sorry to hear this. The charts are working fine. This can happen if the time on your device is out of sync with the internet time. Could you please synchronize the system time with the internet time and check? We’ve explained how to here. If the issue persists, please create a ticket so we can take a look and resolve it at the earliest.
This statement is true for Zerodha. In place of proving customers wrong ZERODHA should work on this and try to improve.
“Often seen that charts are not refreshing on real time & needs to be refreshed manually.”
I lost 2 lakh rupees because of u r application
Who will give back that
I agree even I faced a problem with my orders not completing last month… and I lost money because of that who’s gonna pay for that… w don’t need your apology we need compensation…
I am using zerodha bcz it has got best charts and trading platform.
Hi Vineet, we’re sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
What will a person do with your apology who incurred loss that day because of login failure. Who is going to compensate those looses for them? If we are giving money for maintenance then we expect some better user experience than other brokers. If the issue is same or worse in comparison of other brokers then why should we pay the maintenance fee. It has become a tradition to just post one apology after each glitch and move on. This is completely unacceptable from the most reputed broker of India. Also why Zerodha is using lower bandwidth ?
I have a big trade miss for this problem. Retail trader ra is counting on you guys are not using it right please help retail trailer survive the day.
As we are new traders we expect you all to keep ur trading aap. Up to date.
So many people including me face loss….
Nithin ji This is not fare say to sorry ….
I am face loss not you….
Just understand and don’t repeat this kind of issues in future
Hi Team,
I understand that things didn’t goes well. But please put yourself at our place and think that if you have to sell a position and you are not able to sell it and it’s keep going down and increase your loss. Do you think it’s a happy thought?
I have been using Zerodha from more than 4+ years, day by day platform performance is goes down. I feel like it’s a high time, I need to look for alternatives platform.
Again thank you for teaching us the value of SL and teaching us not to believe in top rated as well.
Just because of these issues, I almost faced loss of approximately 60K in last 6 months.
Hi, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Yesterday 45 min zerodha shut down total I lost almost 5000.00 my reliance option 70 to 50 my nifty call i closed I don’t able to make position for which my sell position I carry it’s loss me when traders need most zerodha have glitch for which we suffer i will search best broker because it was repeating last year I have gave brokerage 1lakh it’s not a less amount
Apology is good but the explanation of the issue is ridiculous because I come from the technical field, your tech team should have foreseen this issue. More importantly one point you always miss Nithin is that – when such kind of issue happens people like me are extremely scared to take a trade on that day even after resolution of the issue. I am an active trader and was just planning a trade when this issue came in and app started behaving erratic. I immediately expressed this on twitter and avoided the trade for the whole day. Same thing I did during November issue which was even scarier than yesterday’s issue. The point is – instable platform scares away traders leading to loss of busines for you and loss of opportunity for me. Hope you will think from this perspective in the future
Hi Biswajit, we’re extremely sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
I was honestly extremely mad at what happened yesterday. But you owning up to this honestly shows accountability and responsibility that I have not seen other brokers do. Kudos to you for that. Please ensure that such issues are not repeated again.
Dear Nithin,
I loved the way you own the incidents and explain them candidly and openly. I have always loved using Zerodha for many years now and I will continue to support it – despite the glitches that we may face even in the future. Zerodha platform proves itself to be trustworthy through such situations and explanations and that, to me, is a gem to preserve!
Vinayak Satpute (Cofounder and CTO at TerraBlu Climate Tech).
Hi,
Dec’4 issue suppose to be handled smoothly if proper auto scale of login services is already placed. Means running zerodha services in more servers when abnormal no. of requests comes.
Hope this will be quickly fixed. Because this is must for any large system like zerodha. I think better to anticipate/monitor such thing for say every 30 min for any financial news/event/rumour which may impact market.
Thanks
ManMohan
Yesterday, 4th November 2023, my profitable trade, about ₹ 5,000/-, resulted in a loss of ₹ 32,500/-. I think Zerodha should reintroduce NEST Trader and Pi.
Hi Ramesh, we’re sorry to hear this. Please create a ticket here and our team will reach out to you at the earliest.
Giving excuses is simple but some of friend losses hard earn money from your non sense excuses. Other all broker working fine except zerodha.
I think to write off a company basis one problem is unfair. Their approach to solving this is what is key – they are apologising and providing us with visibility on what’s gone wrong and taking about how it’s getting fixed. They are honest and transparent and that’s very important as well. Thank you for the post Nitin!
Handling financial instruments is a serious subject; the comparison between apologizing for a social media error and a system failure during a period of high volatility doesn’t fully convey the seriousness of the situation. It’s more like a slap followed by a casual sorry, which doesn’t sit well.
Rather than an apology, like a mature firm, they should state that they will pay the full order amount and incur no brokerage fee on the day of system breakdown in order to prevent future mistakes.
If a company asserts that they prioritize transparency, it is imperative that their actions align with this claim.
Thank you for embracing responsibility and demonstrating acceptance. However, issues of this nature continue to evoke deep concern, especially when significant financial stakes are at play.
re: We now have put in place fixes to ensure these types of cases don’t affect our platform in the future / – for the benefit of folks that read your blog, could you please share some more insights around what these fixes were. Curious to know, as issues like this are hard to predict and hence, trying to understand your approach.
I have similar point. These kinds of issues can keep coming up. Thow us more light on how Zerodha will avoid such glitches in future. My life savings are in your platform. Never thought of having a second broker account. Looks like it is high time to diversify broker accounts!
Technical glitches may be acceptable but atleast there should be alternative option to trade if one platform fails.
for eg, if app fails , user should able to login through web and if web fails , app should atleast work.
Separate the servers so that atleast we will have a choice and 2FA using mobile app is really a bad choice. because if mobile app fails , it is not possible to login through web
There is option to get 2FA to your email / by SMS, see down the login page.
2FA uses a different app not the Kite app. So the issue of authentication is independent of Zerodha side issues.
Our holdings are stored in CDSL? In case zerodha goes down forever, we would get our shares?
Only group which have issued a apology letter officially. Never seen this in my life time experience with this industry. About glitch I have seen this happening with all the brokers around. Zerodha going strong 💪 as always.
Absolutely true. Number of issue coming down and for myself, never faced issue in last three years. Thanks Zerodha
If you never faced an issue with zerodha in last years, you are not a active trader.
So true…
Can’t agree with you more..
This behaviour exhibits transparency, customer-first approach and confidence in the platform.
Keep rocking Team Zerodha!
Lots of bugs are present that day. I can’t login and don’t buy any type of share.
That type of issues is not expecting from Zeroda because it’s very big platform for us so please solve it that type of issues.
Thank You
True, an apology from Mr.Kamath is exceptionally commendable. Glitches do happen in allmost all softwares. But this was rectified within a short period of time. Kudos to Zerodha. Keep Growing.
Login issue faced, but resolved without much delay. Had some earlier issues for selling, but the helpdesk promptly helped by providing permanent solution for such issues. Zerodha is the most dependable trade platform in my experience.
Absolutely correct.
This shows their commitment to provide better and appreciable services.
Thank you
Team Zerodha
When we have to use web login, we are forced to use mobile app to get the auth code. I am sure this will be putting load on the server due to this dual login. Not a tech expert but just thought of giving this suggestion.
Today I faced lagging issues on Web Chart was not able to update in Realtime during day. I had to refresh the page every time.
I there any one else who had similar issues? This happens to me twice since I’m using Kite
just so know my internet was working well that time.
Hi Dharmesh, sorry to hear this. The charts are working fine. This can happen if the time on your device is out of sync with the internet time. Could you please synchronize the system time with the internet time and check? We’ve explained how to here. If the issue persists, please create a ticket so we can take a look and resolve it at the earliest.
YES, In aftenoon session It happened with me also.
I could not find page like market watch order book trade booketc after login my account
Hi Ajit, here’s everything you need to know to get started with your Zerodha account you can check the demo page to know where to find the market watch, order book trade book etc.
Bro, 2 Factor Authentication is essential. Not having it means reduced security and vulnerable to attacks.
What I am curious though is why were they not able to handle enlarged user logins.
There should be more 2FA options, like email codes or 3rd party authenticator apps like MS Authenticator etc..
You can use tools like Authy. Just reset your 2FA and configure it using Authy.
I use Google Authenticator. Infact you need to enable TOTP to trade in certain risky stocks.
Hi Manoj, you can use external apps to use TOTP. We’ve explained the process here.
I think it’s good for safety of account holder.
A simple disabling of 2FA and prompting OTP option on Web version would have remediated the problem immediately. Zerodha communication was mis-leading i.e. use mobile version whereas both browser and mobile were not working. It was a day of serious market impacting event and positions were built overnight. Those 30+ minutes were disastrous for any client especially at BOD. Financial impact was significant including encashing as well as missing opportunities. Hope your RCCA build such failovers. What Zerodha will look into if a Ticket is raised – are you compensating genuinely. Look at client open positions and what they did as distressed selling post system restoration….more out of frustration and anxiety than planning. Nevertheless, thanks for being transparent and honest which other brokers are not.
Whenever you have technical issue.. On that day you should give back money for all losses/profits happened. That day should be 0 profit loss day.
Sir what is the disaster recovery management used by zerodha. can you please do let us know. If you had setup a Business continuity plan then the users will not face this issue. Zerodha team please do set this up if you dont have one.
I am facing the same issue right now. Callint customer care does not make sense it ask for support code, which I can see until I login…Please help, I have open position 🙁
@nitin0dha