API Gateway @ Kong Summit

At the Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) 2019, Asia-Pacific’s largest independent polyglot software conference, I had the opportunity to present a talk titled “Magical User Experiences on Cellular Mobile Networks”, alongside Nilesh Mahajan.

Held annually in Bengaluru, GIDS gathers thousands of software practitioners from across the globe. The 2019 edition continued its tradition of spotlighting real-world engineering challenges and innovations, and our session focused on how Uber tackled a critical one: ensuring fast and responsive app experiences even on unreliable mobile networks.

We shared insights from our work on Uber’s Marketplace Platform, a real-time, global-scale system that coordinates logistics, geographical awareness, and rider-driver state machines. The crux of our challenge was minimizing app launch time and data usage on slower 3G networks while maintaining synchronization across apps.

Our solution involved a fundamental architectural shift—from synchronous polling to asynchronous push-based communication, powered by a protocol we developed in-house called Ramen (Real-time Asynchronous MEssaging Network). Built on HTTP Server-Sent Events (SSE), Ramen enabled prioritized, efficient, and reliable push messaging, significantly reducing network load and app launch latency (up to 89% reduction).

This talk highlighted how thoughtful protocol design, client-server communication optimizations, and state-aware eventing can dramatically elevate mobile UX even under constrained network conditions.