India’s Supabase Block Leaves Developers and Startups Scrambling

Thousands of Indian apps stopped working after several internet service providers blocked access to the backend-as-a-service platform Supabase. The move, implemented on the order of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), has hit solo developers and early-stage startups the hardest, disrupting backend systems that power everything from login pages to live databases.

Users across the country reported that Supabase’s website became inaccessible on networks including Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, triggering outages in live applications.

The disruption is understood to stem from an order issued under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, which allows the government to block public access to online content on grounds such as national security, sovereignty, or public order.

The government has not publicly clarified the rationale behind the move. AIM reached out to MeitY for comment, but didn’t receive any response at the time of publishing.

While Supabase has advised affected customers in India to use an alternative DNS provider or a VPN as a temporary workaround, the move has wide-ranging implications for small-scale developers.

Solo Developers Affected 

India is considered one of Supabase’s fastest-growing developer markets, with thousands of startups, independent developers, and enterprises relying on the platform for backend infrastructure and authentication services. According to data on Similarweb, India accounts for about 10.77% of all global visits as of January 2026.

Supabase’s comprehensive backend solutions span functions, including PostgreSQL database, authentication, real-time updates, file storage, and serverless edge operations designed for low latency. 

Tanmay Agarwal, Founder and CEO of CroozLink, an AI-native link-in-bio platform that turns static links into narrative-driven landing pages for creators and businesses, has been frustrated by the disruption. The Agra-based developer launched his product on February 25. Three days later, it stopped working. 

“Being a solo founder is already incredibly hard. You code alone in your room for months, you finally launch, you build momentum, and then you wake up to find the system actively breaking your running business,” he tells AIM.

“It genuinely feels like the lawmakers have zero understanding of how modern tech infrastructure works. They just sign an order and block a domain, without realising they are instantly destroying the backend for thousands of legitimate Indian startups,” he adds.

Agarwal says he did not immediately realise the issue was linked to infrastructure. On the day of his launch, analytics showed visitors coming to the website, but there were no sign-ups. He started to doubt the product itself.

“Maybe people didn’t like it. Maybe pricing is wrong. Maybe I should give a longer free trial,” he recalls.

Agarwal speculates that the block may have been triggered by alleged misuse of Supabase’s infrastructure for illegal activities, including possible gambling-related hosting. According to a report in The Hindu citing sources, the access was blocked because “information was being shared that should not have been shared.” 

VC firm 3F Venture Partners argues that the problem is not alleged misuse, but the absence of official clarity. It also cautions against drawing conclusions.“Any narrative about miscreants using Supabase is, at best, pure speculation layered on top of a real outage.” 

According to the firm, this uncertainty is what makes the situation particularly destabilising for builders because the disruption represents more than technical downtime. “It is not only downtime; it is unpriced policy risk embedded in the default stack.”

Agarwal says building and maintaining a custom backend is time-consuming and expensive. Supabase allowed him to focus on product and storytelling instead of server maintenance.

“Authentication is the barricade,” he explains. Every login, AI credit usage, and user-generated story is stored in Supabase’s database.

“When the IP gets blocked, data can’t travel. Users can’t authenticate. Even if I temporarily change the authentication, I can’t access the database. So the whole SaaS becomes useless,” he laments. 

The timing could not have been worse. “My runway is three months,” he says. “Within three months, I need enough revenue to cover monthly expenses.” 

While his primary audience is outside India, the issue still affected testing, onboarding, and early momentum. Instead of converting beta users and improving the onboarding process, he spent his time looking for workarounds and exploring a possible backend migration.

A Stopgap Measure

Sunith VS from Kozhikode was also affected by the block. Instead of waiting for official clarity, he found a workaround by building a proxy architecture using Cloudflare, calling it Jiobase.

“Since we can’t directly communicate with Supabase because of the block, we place an intermediate server, like a proxy,” he says. “The user sends a request to Cloudflare, which is not blocked, and the Cloudflare worker forwards the same request to Supabase.”

Sunith says Jiobase is open source, allowing anyone with security concerns to examine the code and understand how it works. However, he acknowledges the inherent risks.

“There are some security issues. If a malicious user or third party gets access, they can read the data coming from the server. That’s why I made it open source so everything is transparent,” he explains. 

Sunith says the initial confusion within the developer community stemmed from what appeared to be partial domain-level blocking.

“They didn’t block supabase.com,” he explains. “They blocked specific Supabase domains where the API calls were hitting. That’s the main confusion in the community.”

Sunith runs a project called devb.io, which converts GitHub profiles into ready-made developer portfolios. “Version 2 of that project is completely in Supabase,” he says. He currently has around 250 customers.

 “Some of my clients and freelancers are also using Supabase. They are all affected,” he adds. 

“Blocking a backend platform can break apps and services overnight. Startups may lose users, payments, and customer trust. Developers can be forced into rushed migrations, which cost time and money. Workarounds like VPNs or DNS changes are unrealistic for most end users and cannot be treated as a solution. This also increases regulatory risk for India’s startup ecosystem, which the government itself says is very large, with over two lakh DPIIT-recognised startups and over twenty lakh direct jobs linked to recognised startups,” says Apar Gupta, Founder Director of Internet Freedom Foundation. 

He adds that when a widely used developer tool can be restricted without clear public reasons, scope, or timelines, it harms business certainty.

Similarly, 3FVC points to the broader impact on India’s startup ecosystem. “India, more than most places, runs on fast iteration.” It says many early-stage founders build first and formalise infrastructure later. “Student founders, hackathon teams, agency builders, and two-person SaaS startups all prototype first and professionalise later,” it notes in its blog.

That is why tools like Supabase matter early on. “Supabase fits that phase perfectly because it is cheap to start, quick to wire up, and good enough to reach real usage before you decide to hire infra specialists.”

However, with policy uncertainty now spreading to databases and backend architectures, Indian developers may need to have a backup plan before writing a single line of code.