Terms of Service — Saarathi

Welcome to Saarathi. These Terms of Service (“Terms”) are an agreement between you and Basavaiah LLC (“Basavaiah,” “we,” “us,” or “our”), the company that operates the Saarathi mobile application and the website at saarathi.us (together, the “Service”).

By creating an account, downloading the app, or using the Service, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the Service.

1. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old (or 16 in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom) to use Saarathi. If you are under 18, you confirm that a parent or legal guardian has agreed to these Terms on your behalf. The Service is not directed to children under 13.

By using the Service you confirm that you have the legal capacity to enter into these Terms and that you are not barred from using the Service under any applicable law.

2. Your account

To use most parts of the Service, you create an account with an email address and password. You are responsible for:

Giving us accurate information when you sign up.
Keeping your password confidential.
All activity that occurs under your account.

Tell us promptly at support@saarathi.us if you believe your account has been compromised.

One person, one account. You may not transfer your account to another person.

3. Your content

3.1 What you own

You keep ownership of the content you create or upload to Saarathi — your posts, articles, events, comments, images, and any other material (your “Content”). Owning your Content is a feature of Saarathi, not an accident.

3.2 The license you grant us

To make the Service work — to store your Content, show it to the audience you intend, deliver it across devices, back it up, and let other users interact with it — you grant Basavaiah a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, adapt, publish, translate, distribute, and display your Content. This license:

Is limited to operating, providing, and improving the Service.
Does not give us the right to sell your Content.
Does not give us the right to use your Content for advertising outside the Service without your separate, explicit permission.
Ends when you delete your Content or your account, except for backups or copies retained to comply with law, and except for Content others have already shared or saved through the Service’s designed features.

3.3 Your responsibilities

You promise that:

You own your Content, or you have the rights and permissions necessary to share it.
Your Content does not infringe anyone else’s rights.
Your Content complies with our Community Guidelines and these Terms.

4. Acceptable use

When you use Saarathi, you agree not to:

Post or share content that violates our Community Guidelines, including harassment, hate speech, sexual content, illegal content, or content that infringes intellectual property.
Impersonate any person or organization, or misrepresent your affiliation with them.
Use the Service to send spam, chain messages, or unsolicited commercial promotions.
Interfere with the Service, attempt to gain unauthorized access to it, scrape it at unreasonable volume, or test its security without our written permission.
Use the Service to develop a competing product, or to train machine-learning models on other users’ Content without their permission.
Use the Service in any way that violates applicable law.

We may, at our discretion and where reasonable, remove Content that violates these Terms or our Community Guidelines, suspend accounts, or refuse service.

5. Hosting events and attendee information

This section applies when you create an event on Saarathi. It does not change anything for people who simply attend one.

5.1 The questions you ask

When you create an event you may write your own registration questions, which attendees answer when they RSVP. You choose those questions, so you are responsible for them. Ask only what you genuinely need in order to run the event.

You must not use registration questions to collect:

Medical or health information — conditions, diagnoses, medications, disabilities, or allergies. Asking a meal preference so that you can cater (for example vegetarian, vegan, or Jain) is fine and expected; asking someone to disclose an allergy, a medical condition, or a disability is not. If you need to accommodate someone, invite them to contact you directly instead of answering in the form.
Government identifiers such as national ID, passport, Aadhaar, or Social Security numbers.
Payment or financial details, including card or bank account numbers. Saarathi does not process payments and must not be used to carry them.
Passwords or credentials for any service, including Saarathi itself.
Caste, ethnicity, political opinion, or sexual orientation. Asking about participation in the religious practice an event is actually for is not covered by this restriction.

We may remove a registration question, hide an event, or suspend your ability to host events if a question breaches this section.

If you have a genuine safety need, these are the ways to meet it without collecting health information:

Ask for an emergency contact — a name and phone number for someone we or you can call. For most events this is more useful than a list of conditions, because it works even when the person cannot answer for themselves.
Ask about the arrangement, not the person. “Do you need step-free access?” or “Do you need seated arrangements?” tells you what to arrange without asking anyone to disclose a disability or a diagnosis.
For events with real physical demands — a multi-day walk, a fast, a long journey — say so plainly in the event description and invite anyone with a concern to contact you directly. Handle any medical clearance through your own process, outside Saarathi.

5.2 The answers you receive

Attendees’ answers are personal information about them. They are not your Content as defined in Section 3, and the license in Section 3.2 does not apply to them. You may use them only to plan and run the event they were given for.

In particular, you must not sell them, publish them, or use an RSVP on its own as consent to add someone to a mailing list, a broadcast audience, or any other event.

Answers are visible to you and to any event administrators you delegate. You choose those administrators, and you are responsible for what they do with the information.

5.3 Rosters you download

You can download your event’s attendee roster, including the answers to your registration questions, as a spreadsheet. Once you do, that file sits on your own device and outside our systems: we cannot recall it, correct it, or delete it for you, and the deletion rules in our Privacy Policy no longer reach it.

From that point the file is your responsibility. You agree to keep it secure, to use it only for that event, and to delete it once you no longer need it. If an attendee asks you to delete their information, or deletes their Saarathi account, you must remove their details from any copy you have downloaded.

5.4 Your own legal obligations

Because you decide what to ask and what to do with the answers, data-protection law may treat you, rather than us, as the party responsible for that information. Where such a law applies to you, complying with it is your responsibility, and the indemnity in Section 13 covers claims arising from how you handle it. How Saarathi itself handles registration answers is described in Section 6.3 of our Privacy Policy.

6. Content moderation and reporting

Saarathi is a community space and we take responsibility for keeping it usable.

You can report content or another user from inside the app. We aim to review reports of objectionable content within 24 hours.
You can block another user from inside the app. Blocked users cannot see or contact you through the Service.
If your Content or account is actioned and you disagree, you can appeal in writing to appeals@saarathi.us. We will review and reply.

More detail is in our Community Guidelines.

7. Our intellectual property

The Saarathi name, logo, app, website, and software are owned by Basavaiah LLC and protected by intellectual-property laws. We grant you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license to use the Service as intended — nothing more. You may not copy, modify, distribute, reverse-engineer, or create derivative works of the Service except as expressly permitted by these Terms or applicable law.

8. Third-party stores and services

The Saarathi mobile app is distributed through the Apple App Store and Google Play. Your use of the app on those stores is also subject to their terms. If there is a conflict between these Terms and the store’s terms regarding the app, the store’s terms control to the extent of the conflict.

The Service relies on third-party providers (listed in our Privacy Policy) to function. Those providers are not under our control and we are not responsible for their availability.

9. Fees

Saarathi is free to use as of the effective date of these Terms. If we introduce paid features in the future, we will give you reasonable notice and clear terms before any charge.

10. Suspension and termination

By you. You can stop using the Service at any time. You can delete your account from inside the app or by following the steps on the Account deletion page.

By us. We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service if:

You materially or repeatedly violate these Terms or our Community Guidelines.
We are required to do so by law.
Continued provision of the Service to you would create legal or security risk for Basavaiah, other users, or the public.

Where we suspend or terminate your account for a serious or repeated violation, we will, where reasonable and not prohibited by law, tell you why and give you an opportunity to appeal.

Sections of these Terms that by their nature should survive termination — including ownership, license grants relating to Content already shared, your obligations as an event host for attendee information you have downloaded (Section 5.3), disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, and dispute resolution — will continue to apply.

11. Disclaimers

The Service is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, Basavaiah disclaims all warranties, express or implied, including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, and uninterrupted or error-free operation. We do not warrant that the Service will always be available, secure, or free of errors.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law — for example, liability for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by our negligence.

12. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Basavaiah LLC, its officers, employees, and agents will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, revenue, data, or goodwill, arising from or related to your use of the Service. Our total aggregate liability for any claim arising out of or relating to the Service will not exceed the greater of (a) the amount you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose or (b) one hundred US dollars (USD $100).

13. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless Basavaiah LLC and its officers, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, liabilities, and expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising out of (a) your use of the Service, (b) your Content, or (c) your breach of these Terms or applicable law.

14. Governing law and dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Any dispute arising out of or relating to these Terms or the Service that is not resolved informally will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state and federal courts located in Virginia, United States, and you and we consent to personal jurisdiction there.

This section does not deprive you of any mandatory rights you have under the law of your country of residence.

15. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Whenever we make a material change we will update the “Last updated” date at the top of this page, and we will do one of the following:

Ask you to accept. For a change that materially affects your rights or obligations, we may ask you to accept the updated Terms in the app before you continue using the Service. Where we do, the updated Terms take effect for you when you accept them, and the notice period below does not apply — you are being asked directly rather than merely told in advance.
Give you notice. For any other material change, we will, where reasonably possible, give you notice in the app, by email, or both, at least 14 days before the change takes effect. Continuing to use the Service after that date means you accept the updated Terms.

If you do not want to accept updated Terms, you can stop using the Service and delete your account at any time (Section 10). We will not apply a change retroactively to a dispute that arose before it took effect.

16. Miscellaneous

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and Community Guidelines, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service, replacing any earlier agreements.
Severability. If a provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions stay in effect.
No waiver. Our failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of that right.
Assignment. You may not assign these Terms without our written consent. We may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets.
Notices. We may give you notices through the app, by email to the address on your account, or by posting on the website.

17. Contact

Email: support@saarathi.us
Legal notices: legal@saarathi.us
Mail: Basavaiah LLC
8401 Mayland Dr, Ste A
Richmond, VA 23294-4648
United States