When a Database Disappears

Sector6  March 4, 2026 The bi-weekly newsletter by AIM that brings the biggest shifts shaping IT, AI, and GCCs. When a Database Disappears For about a week, thousands of Indian apps quietly stopped working. Not because of a bug. Not because a cloud provider went down. But because a backend service became unreachable across multiple Indian internet networks. By Mohit Pandey Supabase, the open-source backend platform used by startups and developers around the world, was suddenly inaccessible on several Indian internet service providers, including Reliance Jio, Airtel, and ACT Fibernet.  Dashboards stopped loading. Databases stopped responding. Authentication systems failed.  On March 4, access was restored. "We sincerely thank the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) for their prompt action and constructive engagement in resolving this matter," Supabase confirmed. Though the issue has now been resolved, the incident exposes a deeper problem. For India's developer community, the outage was short. The lesson was not. Developers reported that applications relying on Supabase databases and APIs suddenly stopped functioning. Supabase initially said the problem appeared to be an ISP-level block. Developers were advised to switch DNS providers or use VPNs as temporary workarounds. Reports later suggested the disruption may have been linked to a blocking order under Section 69A of India's Information Technology Act. The law allows the government to restrict public access to online content for reasons related to sovereignty, national security, or public order. Authorities did not publicly explain the reason behind the action. The scale of the disruption was significant. India is one of Supabase's fastest-growing developer markets. According to Similarweb data, India accounted for 10.77% of global visits to the platform in January. That means a domain-level block does not affect just a handful of developers experimenting with side projects. It affects production systems. When Startups Go Dark For some founders, the outage arrived at the worst possible time. Tanmay Agarwal, founder of CroozLink, launched his AI-native link-in-bio platform on February 25. Three days later, it stopped working. Visitors were still coming to the site. Sign-ups had dropped to zero. "Being a solo founder is already incredibly hard. You code alone in your room for months, you finally launch, you build momentum, and then you wake up to find the system actively breaking your running business," he said. Similar stories surfaced across social media. AIM X Axtria - Generative AI For Billion‑Dollar Business Decisions In this episode of the Simulated Reality podcast, we sit with Ashish Vikram Singh, Principal, R&D at Axtria, to learn how CXOs use generative AI to make high‑stakes, billion‑dollar decisions across sales, marketing, and operations. Get real enterprise use cases, ROI frameworks, and the data foundations you actually need before GenAI works.  Developers Improvised Supabase handles authentication, databases, and backend logic for CroozLink. When the domain became unreachable, those systems stopped communicating. "When the IP gets blocked, data can't travel. Users can't authenticate. Even if I temporarily change the authentication, I can't access the database. So the whole SaaS becomes useless," Agarwal said. His runway is three months long. The outage did not just break code; it slowed momentum. Meanwhile, some developers began building their own workarounds. Sunith VS, a developer from Kozhikode, created a proxy system using Cloudflare Workers to bypass the block. The project, called JioBase, routed requests through an intermediate server before forwarding them to Supabase. "The user sends a request to Cloudflare, which is not blocked, and the Cloudflare worker forwards the same request to Supabase," he explained. The workaround was released as open source so developers could inspect the code. Even then, Sunith acknowledged the risks. Proxy architectures can expose sensitive data if compromised. The deeper confusion came from the nature of the block itself. It appeared to affect certain Supabase domains rather than the entire service. Some endpoints worked while others failed, which made debugging extremely difficult. The broader concern is not the temporary outage. It is the uncertainty. India now has more than two lakh Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade of India-recognised startups and over 20 lakh direct jobs linked to the ecosystem. Many of those companies depend on modern backend infrastructure platforms like Supabase. Apar Gupta, Founder-Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, says blocking such infrastructure can break apps overnight. "Startups may lose users, payments, and customer trust. Developers can be forced into rushed migrations, which cost time and money," he said. Venture firm 3F Venture Partners described the situation differently. For early-stage founders, the outage exposed "unpriced policy risk embedded in the default stack." In simple terms, infrastructure risk now includes regulation. Supabase access has now been restored. Developers can reach their dashboards again. Apps that broke during the outage are slowly returning to normal. But the episode revealed something uncomfortable about how modern startups are built. A single backend platform going offline can break thousands of applications at once. India wants to be the world's largest developer ecosystem. The builders are already here. The infrastructure they rely on must remain just as predictable. Inside Osome's Playbook That Led to 100% YoY Growth For most startups, accounting software lands with a promise and then becomes background noise. It files returns, throws up reports, and occasionally sends a reminder that you forgot something.  In 2025, Osome tried a different route. Instead of adding another feature or two, the company rebuilt its experience based on customer feedback. Read more here. Best Firm for Data Scientists – Showcase your leadership in data science and build a thriving workplace. Apply Now Join AIM Leaders Council – Connect with top data leaders and shape the future of AI. Check Eligibility Our Events – Be part of an exclusive event uniting North America's top data leaders. 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