Groww makes investments simple and accessible, using Google Kubernetes Engine to ensure a reliable platform for customers, and makes data-backed decisions to grow its business with BigQuery.

About Groww

Headquartered in Bangalore, Groww is India’s fast-growing online investment platform that offers a simple and easy way to invest in stocks, direct mutual funds, IPOs, ETFs, and digital gold. Its mission is to make investing as intuitive and accessible as ecommerce.

Industries: Technology

Location: India

Google Cloud results

• Reduces hardware costs with Preemptable Virtual Machines
• Enables a lean DevOps team with Google Cloud
• Analyzes data effectively and quickly for agile business growth

Investing is one way to ensure financial security. However, the thought of it can be a daunting one, especially for people without any prior experience. With a mission to make investment simple for digital natives in India, Groww was launched in 2016.

“We noticed that many people were on social media, booking cabs, and ordering food online, but the same people were not investing, despite having the means to do so,” says Singh. This observation led to a lightbulb moment for the team, and they realized that in order to appeal to the millennial, mobile-savvy generation, they had to create an investment platform that was as easy to use as an ecommerce platform.

Managing unpredictable spikes with Google Kubernetes Engine

As with any platform, there are bound to be peak and non-peak hours when it comes to traffic. For Groww, regular spikes take place in the early mornings, or in the evenings when people are more relaxed having come home from work. But the nature of the fintech industry is a volatile one. Investors are only human, and their investment decisions can be swayed quickly by the news. As such, spikes in traffic can happen at the most unpredictable times. To cope with this unpredictability, Groww uses Google Kubernetes Engine to scale up and down automatically to meet the required capacity around the clock. This also helps the company save costs, as it pays only for what is needed.

“No matter how much of an expert you are, you can never predict when traffic on the platform will be heavy,” says Singh. “Google Kubernetes Engine helps ensure that we never run out of capacity, without overspending on infrastructure cost.”

More recently, the investment company started using Preemptible Virtual Machines, which run at one third of its hardware cost. It also leverages Anthos to monitor and manage its backend infrastructure and to have better workload visibility. Singh shares, “We are very open to adopting new technologies, and our team is always eager to learn if we can do things better. We believe that technology is always evolving and it’s our responsibility to learn and make use of what’s available out there.”

Despite having so much running in the background, Singh explains that the company keeps a very lean DevOps team. “We’ve only got four or five people in DevOps, and that’s only possible because Google Cloud products are already able to run on their own.”

Making swift, data-backed business decisions

Infrastructure is only part of the equation for a successful business. Outside of operations, the ability to analyze data effectively is arguably the most important component for a startup to thrive. Groww leverages BigQuery to make decisions quickly and efficiently. “With BigQuery, we have a place where we can put all data, fire queries, and build dashboards almost instantly, allowing us to make business decisions quickly,” explains Singh.

The team also uses Looker Studio to clearly visualize the information generated through charts and graphs. The best part? Groww doesn’t need to spend additional time and resources setting up a large data team, since BigQuery does most of the work and in a shorter period of time. The resources saved also enables the team to focus on addressing functional requirements, rather than managing and sizing the data platform.

“From a startup perspective, BigQuery is really helpful because often setting up your own data lake can be very costly, and a distraction when the team is also busy focusing on setting up an infrastructure,” adds Singh.

Ensuring security and compliance with Google Cloud

As a fintech company, security and compliance continue to be top priorities for Groww. It chose Google Cloud as its preferred cloud provider because there are three data center replication zones in Mumbai, which means it adheres to financial regulations for keeping its user data within borders.

Moving forward, Groww plans to evolve its platform alongside its users. Singh says, “As we gain more users with different wants and needs, it will be a natural progression that the company evolves. I believe that with Google Cloud, we are well equipped to pave the way to the future.”

In modern software development, automating delivery using Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines draws parallels to automotive assembly lines that doubled the production while cutting down costs by 65%. According to a recent report from Postman, over 51% of respondents indicated that their organizations devote more than half of their development efforts to APIs. APIs are a big part of development, so let’s explore why you should integrate them into your CI/CD pipelines. We will also share best practices and tools for integrating Apigee within your organization’s CI/CD processes.

4 reasons to automate your API delivery with CI/CD pipelines

Apigee is a feature-rich API management platform that provides developers with the necessary tools to build, secure, manage, and publish APIs. But what if you want to automate the process of deploying your APIs to Apigee? That’s where CI/CD comes in. By incorporating Apigee into your CI/CD pipeline, you can automate API deployment, promote consistency across environments, and monitor API performance in real-time. Four of these benefits include:

• Cut time to market by and respond faster to customer demands by automating API deployments.
• Catch defects earlier and improve API security by automating the process of testing and securing APIs.
• Slash costs by saving on staffing, tools, and infrastructure required to deploy and manage APIs.
• Improve visibility and compliance by tracking and auditing API usage.

Key tools and useful tips to effectively automate API delivery and management

Integrating API delivery into CI/CD pipelines using products like Cloud Build streamlines the development process. For example, a developer building an application on Google Cloud can deliver APIs side by side with other workloads in tools such as Cloud Run, Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Functions, and  App Engine.

Operational automation can include a list of seemingly endless aspects of the development process. But at a high-level, the key components of an effective CI/CD pipeline for API management  include:

1. Building and testing API proxies

• If you are new to Apigee, utilize the comprehensive visual tools in the console to build and deploy API proxies using a convenient drag and drop interface. You can elevate their API proxy development by leveraging the VS Code extension and Apigee Emulator. This local setup enables you to use auto-complete features along with local proxy deployment, testing, and seamless code commit to trigger the pipeline for further deployment across Apigee environments.
• Useful tip: Maximize the utility of Apigee, use the Debug tool to inspect every detail of an API transaction. Lastly, remember to export your proxy from the Apigee console and commit it to your source repository. With these best practices in hand, you’re all set to make the most of your Apigee journey.

2. Store and version your API code: 

• Ensure robust source code management – foundation of every CI/CD pipeline – to easily track, and manage changes. Use Cloud Source Repositories, a fully managed Git repository for seamless integration with other GCP development (or) leverage common tools like GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket and many more depending on your organization’s approach
• Useful tip: Employing the right branching strategy helps reduce complexity and keeps delivery lean. Check out this community post for different branching strategies and choose the right one for your use case. Ensure frequent commits and merges to your source code to keep your codebase healthy and up-to-date. Regular code reviews also help refine your code and create quality checkpoints.

3. Ensure code quality with static code analysis:

• Regular static code analysis can help you to improve the quality of your code by detecting potential errors and security vulnerabilities. It can also help you to promote code standardization by ensuring that your code follows a consistent style. For static code analysis you can use apigeelint (for analyzing Apigee bundles), JSHint and ESLint (for JavaScript analysis), Checkstyle and PMD (for Java analysis), or SonarQube (for multi-language support)
• Useful tip: Integrate the tool with your code editor so that you can see the results of the analysis as you write code. Define quality gates/thresholds and run the tool as part of your build pipeline. Mark the build as failed if it does not meet the thresholds.

4. Ensure code resilience with unit testing and Code coverage: 

• Unit tests focus on individual units of code, such as methods or classes. They help to ensure that each unit of code works as expected. Code coverage measures the percentage of code that is covered by unit tests. A high code coverage percentage indicates that more of your code is being tested, which can help to reduce the risk of errors. You can use these tools for unit testing and code coverage: Mocha and Chai (for JavaScript), JUnit (for Java), Cobertura and Istanbul (nyc) (for code coverage)
• Useful tip: Write unit tests for all of your code. This includes both new code and existing code. Run unit tests during the build process. This will help to ensure that your code is always passing unit tests before it is deployed. Set coverage thresholds and mark the build as failed if it does not meet the thresholds. This will help to ensure that your code is sufficiently covered by unit tests.

5. Configure, Package and Deploy your code:

• Creating a successful API deployment is like constructing a sturdy building. You need a strong blueprint (your Apigee code) that has been carefully planned, packaged into a deployable format (a zip file), and then implemented (imported into Apigee and deployed to an Apigee environment). During the packaging phase, the blueprint is detailed with metadata and manifest, similar to labeling and preparing architectural plans for construction. Moreover, all your Apigee configurations, except sensitive info, can be integrated into your blueprint, ready to be brought to life with the right tools. In terms of tooling, you can choose from a variety of open-source options that are built on Apigee APIs. Some of the commonly utilized ones are Apigee Deploy Maven plugin, apigee cli, apigee-sackmesser, and custom scripts using the Apigee APIs.
• Useful tip: Use an artifact system to store these bundles. This will make it easy to manage and track your bundles. Maintain all the necessary configurations like Target server, Key Value Map, etc as part of the source code repo. This will make it easier to deploy your code to different environments. Use the pipeline and the source code to promote the proxies from lower environments to production. This will help you to ensure that your code is always up-to-date in production.

6. Verify the changes with Functional or integration testing:

• Consider integration testing as a rigorous dress rehearsal for your API’s debut performance. It’s your chance to verify if your API plays its part flawlessly under various scenarios, including when it has to share the stage with third-party systems. To ensure the API is working as expected, you have some powerful tools at your disposal such as Apickli (based on cucumber.js), Postman, and JUnit
• Useful tip: Manage these tests as part of the source code and run different test suites based on the environment deploying to. This will make it easy to track and manage your tests. Run these tests right after the deployment and mark the build as failed if it does not meet the threshold. This will help you to identify and fix any issues that may have been introduced during the deployment. Create rollout plans when the functional tests fail by rolling out to the previous working/stable version. This will help you to minimize the impact of any issues that may have been introduced during the deployment.

Additionally, here are some optional trail markers you can consider on your journey to perfecting your pipeline:

1. Testing Your API’s Endurance: Running performance tests ensures your API can withstand the long haul.
2. Clear and Accessible Documentation: Keep your developer portal up-to-date with the latest API documentation. Tools like the Apigee Smartdocs Maven plugin can make this a breeze, particularly with the Drupal developer portal.

Here is a typical pipeline example with a comprehensive reference implementation we see with most of our customers. It triggers when the developer commits the code to the repo. The pipeline can be executed by any CI/CD platform like Cloud Build.

Get started today

Why wait? Kickstart your Apigee journey today directly from the console or evaluate it for free. Leverage our Accelerators to jumpstart your development using examples or advanced technical guidance. Should you have any questions or need support along the way, our Apigee Community is teeming with experts ready to lend a hand.

It has been seven years since Marc Andreesen’s famous article “Why Software is Eating the World” was published in the Wall Street Journal, and given the slow pace of change in many companies, some executives still may not be taking the threat of being “eaten” seriously enough. 

Software, and platform business models based on software, have the potential to deliver powerful economic forces into virtually any company or industry. Every company has valuable assets—such as data, expertise or access to certain services or user bases—and most of these assets can be delivered via software. Once an asset is expressed as software in a modern way—that is, as an application programming interface (API)—it can be combined with other software to create new applications and digital experiences.

Benefits of this approach, just to name a few, include near-zero marginal cost to scale up APIs for new users or use cases; global reach for both partners using APIs and end users consuming the digital experiences those APIs power; and network effects triggered as more partners use a given company’s digital assets and spread its services into new markets and use cases.

Disruption by software-powered business models

In the last two decades we’ve seen individual companies and entire industries upended by these kinds of software-powered business models. Examples abound: Amazon and the retail industry, Netflix and movie rentals, Uber and ride hailing, Airbnb and hotels, etc. We’ve reached the point that these companies’ names have become verbs synonymous with being “eaten” by software (e.g., “Amazoned” or “Netflixed”).

The most famous examples of digital disruption involve digital natives, of course, but legacy businesses are leveraging software to evolve too. Brazilian retailer Magazine Luiza—a company I’ve worked with through my employer, Google Cloud’s Apigee team—has enjoyed enormous revenue growth and seen its stock soar, for example, as it has built out its digital platform capabilities and transitioned from a primarily brick-and-mortar model to an omnichannel one. The point is, whether a company has been in business five decades, five years or five months, software remains ravenous and is always looking for new companies and industries to “eat.”

Change in the face of serious threats

Facing this threat, how should corporate leadership respond? There are some excellent examples of CEOs who have galvanized their companies and led them through the massive, gut-wrenching change required to pivot in the face of a serious threat. A few of the biggest examples include: 

• In 1995, it became apparent to Microsoft co-founder and then-CEO Bill Gates that the internet was “the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC,” and, if not embraced in haste, a threat to many of Microsoft’s businesses. In May of that year he published the “The Internet Tidal Wave” memo and focused all of Microsoft on adopting and building for the internet. Almost 20 years later, current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella similarly made the bold decision to redirect the company for a cloud-first world. 

• Facebook went public at $38 per share in May of 2012 but within months, stocks could be had for a little over half that. The concern? Facebook was a desktop-optimized website without a polished mobile presence, and by 2012, consumer attention had begun to accelerate towards mobile at a much higher rate than many initially predicted.  Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacted by not only proclaiming Facebook a mobile-first company, but also backing up that proclamation with action.  

• Turning to another company I’ve worked with via Apigee, T-Mobile launched its highly visible “Uncarrier” campaign—which offers streamlined, customer-friendly plans and services—while also investing in and executing a new IT vision dedicated to ongoing digital transformation. T-Mobile execs have credited the technology effort, spearheaded by CEO John Legere, with helping the company to introduce new services and better service customers. T-Mobile’s market cap has more than doubled since Legere took over in 2012.  

Keeping pace with changing customer needs

In the face of an existential threat, strong executive leadership is required to pivot the company to safety, as these examples attest. Digital transformationisn’t about deploying new technologies just to make an existing approach more efficient or to add a few new apps or features to the status quo; digital transformation is about keeping pace with changing customer needs by leveraging software platforms to continuously evolve how the business operates. This can be akin to turning an enormous ship—and a ship can’t turn very well without her captain, first mate, and other leaders showing the way.  

Research supports this. A recent Deloitte survey, for example, found that over “80 percent of respondents from digitally maturing organizations say their leaders have sufficient knowledge and ability to lead the company’s digital strategy,” compared to only “22 percent of early-stage business respondents [who] have the same belief.” Similarly, Gartner research finds that CEOs are seeking a “deeper understanding of digital business” as they shift their focus from growth in general to how technology helps them attain it.  

More recently, the onslaught of software devouring the world has been further accelerated by machine learning making everything smarter, voice interfaces changing how people interact with devices, and more. To keep pace, corporate leaders need to galvanize their companies to build and deploy software faster, make systems and data easily accessible inside and outside their companies, and improve digital experiences through not only machine learning but also constant data-driven iteration. 

Seven years after Andreesen’s editorial, the pace of digital disruption is still increasing, and so is the need for strong leadership to pivot fully into digital. Over half of the Fortune 500 has been acquired, merged or declared bankruptcy since 2000—and the companies that survive in coming years won’t be those whose leaders treat technology as an IT concern rather than a core part of the business.