India’s Scale Demands Planning For Failures Beyond Your Stack: Razorpay’s Prabhu Ram
Building reliable digital payments at India’s scale requires planning for failures in infrastructure a company does not control, according to…
India's rapidly growing digital payments industry necessitates a strategic approach to failure planning, according to Razorpay's SVP of Engineering, Prabhu Ram. At Inc42's inaugural CTO Summit 2026, Ram emphasized that companies must prepare for disruptions that may occur both within their own systems and from external infrastructure they do not control.
"You have to build systems assuming that not just the layers that you control may break, but also the underlying layers that you don't control may break," Ram stated during a panel discussion on 'The Architecture of 10X: Engineering for India's Next Scale Curve'. The panel featured other tech leaders such as Kuku's CTO Vikas Goyal, BookMyShow's Noel Curtis, and Oracle's Palanivel Saravanan.
Ram contrasted this reliance on external infrastructure with greater control over their technology stack, citing Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon as examples of companies that have successfully managed this challenge by owning the seven layers of their systems. The discussion underscored the critical need for companies to meet consumer expectations for seamless digital services, while maintaining response times within milliseconds or a few seconds.
Oracle's Palanivel Saravanan highlighted the increasing use of AI models closer to data sources to enhance user responses. However, Ram cautioned that AI cannot compensate for weak engineering foundations and can exacerbate issues if not properly observable.
Written by urgent.news from Inc42's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
