Snapdeal Flash Sales: Scaling Peak Ordering
Built a separate flash-sale product and architecture for extreme bursts in ordering demand.
Prashant Parashar
Co-Founder & CTO, Profound.me
From their time as
AVP Engineering
Snapdeal • Jul 2014 – Nov 2016
Overview
Prashant led the creation of a dedicated flash-sale product when Snapdeal's standard flow could handle roughly 2,000 orders per minute. The new system supported more than 100,000 orders per minute during peak events.
The Story
Prashant took on Snapdeal's peak-sale challenge when the standard website could handle roughly 2,000 orders per minute. Flash events required a purpose-built flow that could absorb a concentrated surge without compromising the wider platform.
He and the team created a separate product where customers registered for a sale and moved through a streamlined checkout when inventory opened. That product design reduced the work required at the moment of peak demand.
The architecture used in-memory databases, synchronization across servers, and explicit failover handling. The team also protected network, database, and server health throughout the event rather than optimizing only the checkout path.
The resulting system handled more than 100,000 orders per minute. One event processed about 100,000 orders in five minutes and contributed substantial growth during a critical commerce window.
Ownership Snapshot
Broad role
Led engineering for major transaction systems at Snapdeal.
Goal
Support extreme ordering bursts during high-demand sales.
Direct ownership
Owned the product flow and architecture for registration, checkout, synchronization, and failover.
Team execution
Directed engineering work across application, database, network, and infrastructure concerns.
Topics
- Distributed Systems
- High Availability
- E-commerce
- Flash Sales
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