Bamboo CEO Explains IPO Downtime During Dangote Offer

Bamboo, a platform managing subscriptions for the Dangote Refinery IPO, faced downtime within the first 30 minutes of the offer opening on September 14. CEO Richmond Bassey stated that the traffic surged beyond ten times its normal level, overwhelming the platform despite prior scaling to handle five times the usual traffic.

Users reported difficulties accessing their accounts, prompting Bamboo to acknowledge the disruption and assure users of service restoration. Bassey explained that the issues were compounded by failures in third-party services essential for functions like OTP generation and KYC processes.

These failures led to increased pressure on Bamboo's systems as customers attempted repeated transactions. The situation was exacerbated by Cloudflare throttling a significant portion of Bamboo's traffic.

Other platforms, such as Cowrywise, also reported slower response times during the IPO. This incident underscores the risks associated with interconnected financial platforms, where a company's resilience can be affected by the performance of its service providers.