121 Finance Case Study: Optimizing Performance and Security with AWS Services

Introduction

121 Finance Private Limited, based in Jaipur, is India’s first RBI-registered NBFC-Factor under the January 2022 regulation. Specializing in fast and customized Trade Credit Finance Solutions, 121 Finance focuses on supporting SMEs and helping small-ticket size trades grow. With a team boasting over 180 years of combined experience in trade, banking, finance, and credit, 121 Finance understands the unique challenges businesses face and provides tailored solutions that foster growth and stability.

The company’s offerings enable businesses to improve liquidity by accelerating payments on their B2B invoices, effectively managing both Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. By helping businesses cover liquidity needs and mitigate risks, 121 Finance plays a vital role in driving the growth of SMEs across India.

Business Need:

As 121 Finance expanded, it faced challenges in several areas, including high latency, security threats, scalability issues, and inefficient data management. The company’s platform was struggling to cope with increasing traffic, which led to slow response times, occasional downtimes, and vulnerabilities to cyberattacks. These issues were compounded by the need for better data backup and content delivery solutions. To sustain growth and provide a seamless experience to users, the company required an infrastructure overhaul with cloud solutions.

Requirements from the Customer:

121 Finance needed a solution that could address the following critical requirements:

• Scalability: The infrastructure should scale automatically to meet traffic spikes without manual intervention.

• Security: The platform must have robust protection against common vulnerabilities and cyberattacks.

• Performance: Low latency and fast content delivery are essential for a seamless user experience.

• Reliability: The system should ensure 24/7 availability with minimal downtime.

• Cost Efficiency: Solutions should provide a cost-effective model, only paying for what is used.

Implementation:

To address the challenges faced by 121 Finance, a comprehensive AWS-based solution was implemented:

1. Amazon Route 53:

• Amazon Route 53 managed DNS services, optimizing traffic routing and reducing latency for users across different regions.

2. Amazon CloudFront

• Amazon CloudFront was deployed for edge caching, improving content delivery speed by caching high-demand assets closer to users globally, reducing latency significantly.

3. AWS WAF

• AWS WAF provided enhanced security by filtering malicious traffic like cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL injection, adding an additional layer of protection at the application level.

4. Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

• Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) balanced traffic across multiple availability zones, ensuring the platform remained available and performant during traffic surges by automatically scaling resources.

5. AWS Shield

• AWS Shield offered automatic protection against DDoS attacks, securing the platform from network-layer threats and maintaining availability during malicious traffic spikes.

6. Security Groups

• Security Groups acted as instance-level firewalls, controlling inbound and outbound traffic to ensure only authorized access to web and application servers.

7. Amazon ElastiCache

• Amazon ElastiCache was used to cache frequently accessed data, reducing response times and offloading the database by storing commonly queried data in-memory.

8. Amazon RDS

• Amazon RDS created a highly available multi-AZ database, automating backups and failover, ensuring minimal downtime and efficient database performance.

9. Amazon S3

• Amazon S3 was used for scalable object storage of static assets, such as images and backups, providing cost-effective and reliable data storage.

• This implementation ensured that 121 Finance’s platform became highly scalable, secure, and efficient, meeting the increasing demands of its growing user base while improving overall performance.

Cost Savings:

121 Finance experienced significant cost savings by leveraging the pay-as-you-go model provided by AWS. This model allowed the company to scale services as needed, paying only for resources consumed during peak demand periods, eliminating the cost of maintaining idle infrastructure. Additionally:

Elastic Load Balancing and Auto Scaling: reduced the need for manual scaling efforts, saving operational costs.

Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon CloudFront: minimized bandwidth and compute resource consumption, lowering operational expenses.

Amazon RDS: automated backup and failover, reducing the need for costly manual database management.

Overall, AWS’s efficient cloud solutions helped 121 Finance optimize infrastructure costs, ensuring that the platform could grow without burdening the budget. These savings allowed the company to reinvest in further innovation and customer experience improvements.