Privacy policy

1.Who this covers

This policy explains how Chola Chariots Mobility Private Limited (“Chola Chariots”, “we”) handles personal data when you use our rider app, our driver partner app, this website, or our support desk. We are the data fiduciary for that data under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

It applies whether you are a rider, a driver partner, a vehicle owner whose vehicle is attached to a partner account, or someone who simply called our support line.

2.What we collect

You give us

• Account details — your mobile number, name, and optionally your email address, profile photo, gender and emergency contact.
• Saved places — home, work and any other address you choose to save.
• Driver partner documents — driving licence, registration certificate, insurance, permit, fitness certificate, PAN, Aadhaar number, police verification and bank account details. We collect these only from people applying to drive.
• Messages — support conversations, ride ratings, complaints and the in-app chat between a rider and a driver during a trip.

The service generates

• Location — your pickup and drop points, and the route actually travelled. A driver partner's device shares its position while they are online, because that is how the app can offer them nearby trips; it stops when they go offline.
• Trip records — times, distance, waiting time, the fare breakdown, cancellations and who cancelled.
• Payments — the amount, the method, the transaction reference and your wallet ledger. Card numbers and UPI credentials go directly to our payment partner and are never stored on our systems.
• Device and technical data — device model, operating system, app version, language, IP address, crash reports and push notification token.

3.Why we need it

We use personal data only for the purposes below. Where the law requires your consent, we ask for it in the app before collecting, and you can withdraw it at any time.

We do not sell personal data, and we do not use your trip history to build advertising profiles for other companies.

4.Who else sees it

• Your driver, and you. A driver sees your first name, your rating, the pickup and drop for the trip they accepted, and can contact you through a relayed number. You see their name, photo, rating, vehicle and number plate. Neither of you sees the other's phone number.
• Anyone you share a trip with. A trip link shows live vehicle position, driver name and number plate until the trip ends.
• Payment partners. Licensed gateways process cards, UPI and refunds. They receive the amount and reference, not your trip history.
• Maps and routing providers. Coordinates are sent to compute routes, distances and ETAs.
• Cloud and communication providers. Hosting, SMS for OTP, push notifications and email, all under contract and only for these purposes.
• Authorities. When a law, a court order or a police investigation requires it. We check that each request is lawful and disclose only what is asked for.

Our infrastructure is hosted in India. If a provider processes data outside India, that transfer is limited to what the service requires and is permitted under applicable Indian law.

5.How long we keep it

• Trip and payment records: eight years, because tax and accounting rules require it.
• Driver partner documents: for as long as the partner account is active, and three years after it closes.
• Support conversations and incident reports: three years from the last message.
• Continuous driver location traces: ninety days, after which only the route attached to a completed trip remains.
• Account profile: until you delete your account, then thirty days, other than what we must keep under the rules above.

6.Your rights

Under the DPDP Act you can ask us to:

• tell you what data we hold about you and who we have shared it with;
• correct or complete anything that is wrong;
• erase data we no longer need — we will explain anything we must keep, and why;
• nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapacitated;
• withdraw a consent you gave, without affecting trips already completed.

Most of this is in the app under Account → Privacy, including account deletion. For anything else, write to privacy@cholachariots.com. We reply within thirty days.

7.How we protect it

Traffic between the apps and our servers is encrypted in transit. Documents and sensitive fields are encrypted at rest. Access to production data is restricted to the staff who need it for their work, is logged, and is reviewed. Our trip and wallet records are append-only — a completed trip or a ledger entry cannot be quietly edited after the fact, by us or by anyone else.

No system is perfect. If a breach affects your data, we will notify you and the Data Protection Board of India as the rules require, and tell you what to do about it.

8.Children

Our service is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly create accounts for children. If you believe a child has an account with us, write to privacy@cholachariots.com and we will close it and delete the data.

9.This website

This website is a set of static pages. It sets no advertising or tracking cookies, and it does not profile you. The fare and earnings calculators run entirely in your browser — nothing you type into them is sent anywhere.

Our contact form does not transmit anything either: it opens your own email app with a message you can review before sending.

10.Changes and complaints

When this policy changes materially we will tell you in the app before the change takes effect. The review date at the top always reflects the current version.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data, contact our grievance officer: Grievance Officer, Chola Chariots, 2nd Floor, Chariot House, Anna Salai, Guindy, Chennai 600032, Tamil Nadu, privacy@cholachariots.com. If we do not resolve it, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India. Our terms of service and cancellation policy cover the rest of the relationship.