In a bold move signaling a potential shift in infrastructure strategy for growing startups, Indian e-commerce enabler Dukaan has transitioned its core operations from Amazon Web Services (AWS) to bare metal servers, slashing its monthly infrastructure bill from a staggering $80,000 to just a few thousand dollars. This decision challenges the prevailing "cloud-first" mantra, particularly for companies reaching a certain scale where the convenience of cloud services is overshadowed by escalating costs. The migration highlights a growing trend of cloud repatriation, where businesses are re-evaluating the long-term economic viability of public cloud platforms and opting for the greater control and cost-efficiency of self-hosted solutions. For Dukaan, a company focused on providing affordable e-commerce solutions to small businesses in the price-sensitive Indian market, the high cloud expenditures were becoming an existential threat.[1][2][3]

The impetus for this dramatic shift was the unsustainable nature of Dukaan's monthly AWS bills, which had ballooned to between $70,000 and $90,000.[2][3][4] Subhash Choudhary, the co-founder and CTO of Dukaan, detailed the journey in his book, "The Accidental CTO," explaining that while AWS provided crucial speed and ease of maintenance in the company's early days, it came with a significant "convenience tax."[1] This tax, paid for the privilege of not managing the underlying hardware, was initially a worthwhile investment that allowed for rapid scaling.[1] However, as the company matured, this convenience threatened to bankrupt them.[1] Choudhary calculated that the same resources on bare metal could be 10 to 20 times cheaper, estimating that an $80,000 AWS bill could translate to a mere $5,000 on bare metal.[1] This vast cost disparity forced a strategic re-evaluation, pushing the company to seek an alternative that aligned with its long-term vision of financial prudence and sustainability.[3]

To execute the move without disrupting services for its vast customer base, Dukaan employed a meticulous migration strategy known as the "Strangler Fig Pattern." This approach, named after a plant that slowly envelops a host tree, involves gradually building a new system around a legacy one and incrementally routing traffic until the old system is fully replaced and can be decommissioned.[1][5][6] A critical element enabling a zero-downtime migration was Dukaan's ownership of its own IP address space.[1] Choudhary explained that this portable, permanent internet address allowed them to "move house" without users ever knowing, as the IP address could be re-routed from the AWS infrastructure to the new bare metal servers seamlessly.[1] The company chose Hetzner, a German-based bare metal provider, renting physical servers in data centers geographically close to their existing AWS regions, such as a facility in Helsinki, Finland, to replace an AWS cluster in a nearby location.[1] This methodical, phased transition minimized risk and ensured business continuity throughout the complex infrastructure overhaul.[6][7]

The results of the migration were dramatic, with monthly infrastructure costs plummeting from as high as $90,000 to around $1,500, a cost reduction of over 95%.[2][3] Beyond the immense financial savings, the move to dedicated hardware also yielded significant performance benefits.[2][3] Dukaan reported substantial improvements in Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), leading to faster response times and a better user experience for both merchants and their customers.[2][3] This shift represents a deliberate trade-off, prioritizing high performance and cost-effectiveness over the high availability and automated scalability often touted by major cloud providers.[3] By taking direct control over its hardware, Dukaan gained the ability to optimize its entire stack for performance and security, free from the layers of abstraction and associated costs inherent in public cloud environments.[2]

Dukaan's decision is not an isolated incident but rather a prominent example of a wider industry trend known as cloud repatriation.[8][9] While cloud services remain indispensable for startups and companies needing to scale rapidly without large upfront capital expenditures, a growing number of mature organizations are finding that the long-term operational costs can become prohibitive.[10][8][9] Cost, security, and performance are the primary drivers for this shift.[11][9] Companies with predictable workloads and the in-house technical expertise to manage their own infrastructure are increasingly questioning the value proposition of paying a premium for cloud convenience.[10] This trend suggests a maturing market where infrastructure decisions are not a binary choice between cloud and on-premises, but rather a strategic evaluation based on a company's specific needs, scale, and economic realities.[10] For the AI industry, where computational demands can be massive and unpredictable, Dukaan's move serves as a compelling case study, suggesting that a hybrid approach or a eventual migration to bare metal could become a key strategy for managing the immense costs associated with training and deploying large-scale models.