How Apache Kafka Rescued a Hyperlocal Delivery Startup From System Collapse
SwiftKart, a fast-growing hyperlocal delivery startup, saw daily orders surge from 4,000 to 40,000 in just two months, overwhelming its Redis-based queue architecture. Backend engineer Arjun and DevOps engineer Meera faced cascading failures including delayed notifications, overflowing queues, duplicate messages, and crashing workers. The core problem was that Redis lacked durability, multi-consumer support, and the ability to replay events, making it unsuitable for high-volume real-time streaming. The company's CTO decided to migrate to Apache Kafka, a distributed, durable, and replayable event log designed to handle millions of events per second. The article serves as both a narrative and a technical walkthrough of why Kafka was chosen, covering its architecture, key concepts, trade-offs, and scenarios where it may not be the right fit.
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