Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

My Pillion is a technology platform that helps a private vehicle owner who is already making a journey find a co-traveller heading the same way. For the personal data described in this notice, we decide why the data is processed and how. In the language of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, we are the Data Fiduciary and you are the Data Principal. Under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules still in force under it, we are a body corporate and you are the provider of the information.

Our contact for privacy requests is the Grievance Officer named in section 12. The registered correspondence address is J-602, Aparna Kanopy Marigold, Gundlapochampally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500100, India. Email admin@mypillion.co.in. Phone +91 76589 99944.

2. Which law this notice follows

The Information Technology Act, 2000, section 43A, and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011, are the statutory privacy rules that apply to a body corporate in India today. Section 43A requires reasonable security practices where negligence in handling sensitive personal data causes wrongful loss. Rule 4 of those Rules requires a privacy policy, published on the website, that states the type of information collected, the purpose of collection, and the reasonable security practices we follow. Rule 5 restricts collection to what is necessary for the lawful purpose, and Rule 6 restricts disclosure. Section 72A of the Information Technology Act penalises disclosure of personal information in breach of a lawful contract.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 sets a higher standard of notice, purpose limitation, and data-principal rights. The core obligations in sections 3 to 17 of that Act are notified to commence on 13 May 2027. We have written this notice to that standard now, so that what we tell you today is the same standard we will be held to when those provisions are in force. Where the 2011 Rules are stricter, we follow the 2011 Rules. This notice does not invent a complaint route that the statute has not yet opened. Until the Data Protection Board of India is constituted and empowered to receive complaints, your route is the Grievance Officer in section 12, and the remedies available under the Information Technology Act and other law that is in force.

We also follow the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, including the requirement to appoint a Grievance Officer and to acknowledge a complaint within twenty-four hours and resolve it within fifteen days. Where the directions of the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team dated 28 April 2022 apply to our systems, we retain the relevant information-and-communication-technology logs for at least one hundred and eighty days.

3. The data we collect, and why

We collect only what we need to create your account, match you with a co-traveller, show a live position during an active ride, confirm the correct person with a PIN, and send you notifications about that ride. We do not sell personal data. We do not use it to build advertising profiles. We do not ask for your password to any other service, and we do not collect financial account numbers, card numbers, or UPI identifiers for the purpose of processing a payment, because this version of My Pillion does not process payments.

Account and identity

When you register, we receive the mobile number you verify by a one-time password, and, where you sign in with Google, the email address and basic profile identifier that Google shares with us for that sign-in. You give us a display name, and you may add a profile photograph. We ask for gender only so that a woman can choose to be matched only with women riders. That choice is yours. Gender is not shown as a public directory of users. We keep it because the women-only option cannot work without it, which is the necessity test in Rule 5 of the 2011 Rules and the purpose limitation we apply under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act.

Location

When you go live as a rider, the application publishes your position so that a pillion nearby can be matched and so that, once matched, the other person can see the live dot. That position is stored in a short-lived location record tied to your user id, together with the ride identifier and the time of the update. We update it while the live ride is searching or under way, including a periodic refresh if you are standing still, so that a waiting rider does not disappear from the match. When the live ride ends or is cancelled, that live location record is removed. We do not run a background location product when you are not in a live ride. A go-live point may remain on the ride document as the place the ride started. Precise movement after that lives only in the live location record described above.

Rides, messages, and device

We store the rides you post or join, the pickup and drop you choose, the booking status, the PIN check that starts a trip, and the chat messages sent inside a booking. Chat exists so the two people on that booking can coordinate the pickup. It is not a general messenger, and messages are visible to the participants of that booking and to us for safety and support. If you allow notifications, we store a push token so Firebase Cloud Messaging can deliver ride alerts to that device. We also keep ordinary service logs, such as the time of a sign-in or a failed request, so we can secure the service and answer a support question.

What you give us by using the phone

The phone operating system asks you, separately, for location, notification, and camera or photo permission. If you refuse location, live matching cannot see you as a rider and cannot place you on the map. If you refuse notifications, the ride can still exist, but you may miss an offer or a PIN prompt. Refusing the camera only means you cannot attach a profile photo from the camera. Those permission dialogs are the device’s own consent, in addition to this notice.

4. The lawful reason for each use

We process account data, ride records, and messages because you asked us to provide the matching service and because that processing is necessary to perform the contract in the Terms. Under the Indian Contract Act, 1872, a contract requires free consent and a lawful object. Creating an account and accepting the Terms is that consent for the uses described here. Location during a live ride is necessary for the match itself. Gender is processed only for the women-only option you choose to use. Push tokens are processed so we can tell you that a ride event happened. Logs are processed to keep the service secure and to meet the retention direction described in section 2.

We do not use your data for a new purpose that you would not reasonably expect from a ride-matching app. If we ever need a genuinely new purpose, we will update this notice and, where the law requires a fresh consent, we will ask for it before we rely on it. You may withdraw consent as described in section 10. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was already lawful, and it may mean we can no longer provide the feature that depended on that data.

5. Who else sees it

The rider and the pillion on a booking can see what they need to complete that ride: display name, the pickup and drop, the live position while the ride is active, the booking status, and the chat on that booking. A profile photograph, if you added one, may be shown in that context. We do not publish a public map of every user’s home. Other signed-in users can see a live rider’s position on the map while that rider is in an active live ride, because that is how a pillion finds a bike that is actually nearby. They do not receive your phone number through the live dot.

We use Google Firebase, including Authentication, Cloud Firestore, Realtime Database, Cloud Functions, Cloud Messaging, and related Google Cloud hosting, to run the application. Those systems process the data on our instructions in order to store the account, match the ride, deliver the notification, and keep the service available. Google’s own privacy policy describes how Google handles data it processes as a provider. Map search and route display use Google Maps. When you search for a place or we draw a route, the query is sent to Google under the Google Maps Platform Terms and the Google Privacy Policy at https://policies.google.com/privacy. Google may retain that query under its own terms. We do not control Google’s independent use of data it receives as a map provider.

We may disclose information if a law, a court, or a government authority with jurisdiction requires it, or if disclosure is necessary to prevent harm, to investigate a safety report, or to establish or defend a legal claim. We do not sell personal data to data brokers, and we do not share it with advertisers.

6. Where the data is kept

The application backend runs on Google Cloud in India where the product is configured to do so, including Cloud Functions in the asia-south1 region and the Realtime Database instance used for live location. Some Google services may process or store a copy outside India as part of how that service operates. Where data leaves India, we rely on providers that contract to protect it, and we limit the transfer to what the service needs. We will revisit this paragraph if a notified rule under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act imposes a transfer condition we do not already meet.

7. How long we keep it

The live location record is deleted when the live ride ends or is cancelled. Chat and booking records are kept so that a safety report or a dispute about that ride can still be understood. We keep them for up to twelve months after the ride closes, unless a longer period is required for a legal claim, a police request, or the one-hundred-and-eighty-day log direction in section 2. Account data is kept for as long as the account exists. When you ask us to delete the account, we delete or irreversibly anonymise the profile, the phone and email link, the profile photo, and the live location record, subject to section 8. Ride records that we must retain for a safety incident or a legal duty may be kept in a restricted form for that duty and then deleted.

8. How to delete your account and your data

You can ask us to delete your account from inside the application, on the profile screen, or by writing to admin@mypillion.co.in with the subject “Delete my account”. Please send the email from the address on the account, or include the mobile number you verified, so we can be sure the request is yours. We will delete the account and the personal data described in section 7 within seven days of a request we can verify.

Deletion is not the same as signing out. Signing out only ends the session on that phone. Deletion removes the account. We may refuse or delay a specific field if we are legally required to keep it, if there is an active safety investigation, or if a competent authority has asked us to preserve it. If we refuse any part of a request, we will tell you why. This page is the web link for account deletion. The same request can be started from the profile screen in the application, which opens this section.

9. Security

Section 43A of the Information Technology Act requires reasonable security practices where sensitive personal data is handled. Rule 8 of the 2011 Rules points to the IS/ISO/IEC 27001 standard, or to a comparable documented practice. We restrict database access with security rules so that a user cannot write another user’s account, we authenticate requests to Cloud Functions, we do not put map web-service keys in the client for the normal path, and we transmit data over HTTPS. No method of transmission or storage is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that creates a real risk to you, we will tell you and, where the law requires it, the authority concerned.

10. Your choices

You may review and correct your display name, photograph, and gender from the profile screen. You may turn off location or notifications in the phone settings. You may withdraw the women-only preference by changing gender settings or by asking us to delete the account. You may ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, for correction of something that is wrong, and for deletion, by emailing the Grievance Officer. We will answer within the fifteen days required for a grievance under the Intermediary Guidelines, and sooner where we can. We may ask you to confirm that you are the account holder before we disclose or delete.

The application is not directed at anyone under eighteen. Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, read with the Indian Majority Act, 1875, is why the Terms require you to be an adult. If we learn that we have collected personal data from a child, we will delete the account.

11. Google Play and this notice

If you installed My Pillion from Google Play, Google’s own policies also apply to the store listing. The Data safety form in Play Console is filled from this notice. It states that we collect personal information, photos, location, messages, and a device identifier for notifications, that we share ride information with the other person on the booking and with the service providers in section 5, and that we do not sell data. If that form and this notice ever diverge, this notice is the description of our practice and we will correct the form.

12. Grievance Officer

The Grievance Officer, appointed for the purposes of Rule 3(2) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, and as the contact for privacy requests under this notice, is Kulvanth, Grievance Officer, My Pillion. Email admin@mypillion.co.in. Phone +91 76589 99944. Address: J-602, Aparna Kanopy Marigold, Gundlapochampally, Hyderabad, Telangana 500100, India. A complaint is acknowledged within twenty-four hours and resolved within fifteen days. Please include your registered mobile number and, if the complaint is about a ride, the booking.

If you are in immediate danger, call 112 before you write to us. After you are safe, tell us and we will preserve the ride record and act on the account concerned.

13. Changes to this notice

We will change this notice when our practice changes or when the law changes. The date at the top is the date of the current version. If a change is material, we will post the new notice at this URL before we rely on it. Continuing to use My Pillion after that date means you have had a chance to read the new notice. The previous published text is replaced by this version for all use on and after 3 October 2026.