Zepto's Journey to Developer Platform Innovation
Zepto, a rapidly expanding quick commerce company in Bengaluru, has recently emerged as a notable winner in the CNCF End User Case Study Contest for its innovative developer platform. This achievement highlights Zepto's commitment to enhancing efficiency within their operations, particularly through the use of technologies like Backstage, Argo, and Kubernetes. At the upcoming KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025, Zepto is set to share insights about its platform transformation journey.
A Platform That Streamlines Developer Productivity
Facing critical challenges that hindered developer productivity, Zepto's teams found themselves spending excessive time on onboarding new microservices, configuring CI/CD pipelines, and provisioning infrastructure. These tasks resulted in limited visibility across services and environments, leading to frequent misconfigurations and service instability. Recognizing these bottlenecks, the company embarked on a mission to streamline its operations.
Unlocking Efficiency through Standardization
“We identified onboarding and provisioning as opportunities to unlock greater efficiency,” said Qamarali Shaikh, VP Infrastructure Platform at Zepto. By evolving these processes, the firm was able to significantly enhance its speed and ability to deliver consistent results. Now, the onboarding process has been drastically reduced from two days to just ten minutes. This remarkable improvement allows teams to deploy features more quickly and respond to market demands in real-time.
Building an Internal Developer Platform
To tackle these operational challenges head-on, Zepto constructed an internal developer platform utilizing Backstage, Kubernetes, and ArgoCD. This new platform optimizes how teams onboard new services, provision necessary infrastructure, and manage deployments. With this approach, over 500 developers across more than 20 teams can now self-serve using standardized templates and workflows, which effectively eliminates outdated operational dependencies.
Enhancing Visibility and Operational Clarity
As a result of the platform’s implementation, developers gained unified visibility across more than 700 ArgoCD applications and 400 AWS resources. This increased transparency not only mitigates risk but also enhances overall operational clarity. Backstage served as the backbone of the platform and was enhanced with custom plugins that facilitate dynamic validation, metadata management, and performance testing.
Leveraging Powerful Tools for Success
With the integration of tools like ArgoCD, New Relic, Grafana, and SonarQube, the platform has created a real-time catalog of services that improves accessibility and efficiency. ArgoCD has enabled GitOps-based deployments, while Kubernetes functions as the orchestration layer managing four distinct environments.
Achieving Measurable Outcomes
The outcomes of this innovative platform are unmistakable: a staggering 90% reduction in setup time, comprehensive CI/CD coverage across all services, and full operational independence for developers. Where there used to be weekly onboarding queues, the new platform supports frequent and stable deployments rooted in standardized security and configuration practices.
Sharing Insights with the Cloud Native Community
Chris Aniszczyk, CTO of the CNCF, praised Zepto's efforts, stating, “Zepto's implementation is a strong example of what's possible when teams take platform engineering seriously.” By taking full advantage of Backstage, Kubernetes, and ArgoCD, Zepto has created a scalable, consistent, and speedy environment for hundreds of services, contributing valuable insights to the cloud-native ecosystem.
Looking Ahead to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025
During the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India, Zepto plans to dive into the architecture, adoption journey, and technical lessons learned from the development of their platform. Additionally, they will share insights into their custom Backstage plugins, enriching the knowledge of attendees.
Frequently Asked Questions
What technologies did Zepto use to improve its developer platform?
Zepto utilized Backstage, Kubernetes, and ArgoCD to streamline its developer processes.
What was the main challenge faced by Zepto before the platform transformation?
The main challenge was the lengthy onboarding process and manual provisioning which affected developer productivity.
How much time was reduced in the onboarding process after implementing the new platform?
The onboarding time was reduced from two days to just ten minutes.
What was the impact of the new developer platform on Zepto's operations?
The new platform achieved a 90% reduction in setup time and allowed for full CI/CD coverage across services.
What insights will Zepto share at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India?
Zepto will share details about their architecture, adoption journey, and experiences related to their custom Backstage plugins.
