Privacy Policy

This policy explains what personal information Kattutharai collects, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices you have. It covers the Kattutharai mobile app (the “App”) and our website, kattutharai.com.

Kattutharai helps farmers across India buy and sell livestock, farm machines and fodder directly with each other. Kattutharai is run by Suryaprakash, trading as KATTUTHARAI, in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India (“we”, “us”, “our”).

If you do not agree with this policy, please do not use the App or the website.

1. Information we collect

1.1 Information you give us

• Your sign-in account — you sign in with Google or, on iPhone, with Apple. We receive your name and email address, and from Google your profile photo. Accounts made with the phone-number sign-in of older versions of the App can still sign in that way, and we keep the phone number they used.
• Your contact number — the mobile number you type when you set up your profile. We do not check that it is yours or that it works. Buyers use it to call or WhatsApp you (see §3.1).
• Your name, profile photo, district, village and state — for your profile. The App fills in your district, village and state from your phone’s location when you set up your profile, and you can change them.
• Your ads — up to 5 photos, one video of up to 45 seconds with its sound, and the category, breed, age, weight, description and price you enter. You can also add details about the animal, such as how much milk it gives, whether it is pregnant, or whether it is male or female.
• Your voice note — if you choose to record one for your ad, up to 1 minute long. The App uses your phone’s microphone only while you are recording. Everyone who opens your ad in the App can hear it.
• Where your ad is — when you post an ad, the App uses your phone’s location (GPS) to name the nearest village and its district. We keep this place rounded to about 1 km.
• Chats and orders — the messages you send in the App’s chat, and the orders you send or receive (quantity, date, collect or deliver, and any note).
• Your requests to sellers — when you use Tell sellers to say which animal you want: the animal, how many, your price range, how far you can travel, and any short note. We name the nearest village from your phone’s location or your home area, and keep the place rounded to about 1 km.
• Reports — when you report an ad, a person or a business card: the reason and any note you add.
• Farm pages — if we invite you to make a farm page: the farm’s name, type, place, the animals you sell, a short description and a photo.
• Payments — when you pay for Boost, the payment is taken by Apple (on iPhone) or Google Play (on Android). Older versions of the App took Android payments through Cashfree. We receive the amount, the order or transaction ID, and whether the payment succeeded. We never see your card, UPI or bank details.

1.2 Information collected automatically

• Your location while you use the App — with your permission, to show the nearest ads first with the distance to each, and to name the village of an ad you post. The App never uses your location in the background. When you browse, we use your current position to sort ads and do not store it. From your profile we keep your home area, rounded to about 1 km, to send you alerts about new ads near you (see §2).
• What you do in the App — the ads you see, open, save, search for (by typing or by voice), chat about or order, how long you look at an ad, the screens you visit, and how far you get when you sign up, post an ad or buy Boost. These records carry your account ID and the ad’s ID. We do not record your messages, your phone number, or anything you type except search words. We use these records to show you the ads you are most likely to want, and to improve the App.
• Voice search (Android) — when you tap the microphone in search, Google’s speech service on your phone listens and turns what you say into words, under Google’s own privacy policy. The App does not record or receive the sound. We receive only the words, and keep them as search words.
• Your notification token — an ID for your phone that lets us send you notifications.
• Crash reports — when the App crashes or meets an error: the error, your phone’s model, its Android or iOS version, and the App version. We use Sentry for this.
• On Android only:
  • Google Analytics for Firebase — what you do in the App, with your account ID, district, state, language and the section you use (livestock, machines or fodder).
  • Your advertising ID — your phone’s Google advertising ID, shared with Meta (Facebook) only to measure whether our own ads bring people to the App. On iPhone and iPad we do not collect an advertising ID, and the App never asks to track you.

You can turn off both of these at any time (see §2.1 and §5).

1.3 On our website

• Google Analytics — which pages are visited, and roughly from where, so we can improve the website.
• Your language — if you pick a language, your browser remembers it on your device. To open the website in your state’s language, your browser asks our helper at geo.kattutharai.com (run on Cloudflare) which country and state your internet connection is in. We do not keep that answer.

We do not collect your contacts, photos other than the ones you choose to post, any sound other than a voice note you choose to record, what you do outside the App, health data, or your location in the background.

2. How we use your information

• To show you the ads nearest to you first, with each ad’s village and distance.
• To let buyers and sellers contact each other (see §3.1).
• To pass your requests to sellers near you who have a matching animal, and to tell you when they reply (see §3.1).
• To send you notifications about your chats, orders, ads, requests and Boost, reminders about orders you have received, a question before your ad ends whether it is still for sale, and alerts:
  • a new ad near you — when an ad is posted within 25 km of your home area, at most one such alert a day;
  • a Boosted animal near you — when someone Boosts an ad within 25 km for a kind of animal you look at often. Each night we work out which animals you look at most, from the ads you open, chat about and order.
• To run Boost: a Boosted ad is shown higher to buyers within 100 km for 7 days.
• To run orders and farm pages.
• To keep Kattutharai safe: to look into reports, scams and misuse. A person reads every report.
• To fix crashes and improve the App.
• To measure our own advertising: whether people who saw an ad for Kattutharai installed the App and went on to post or find an ad.
• To keep the records the law asks us to keep (see §4).

2.1 Business cards and analytics

Some cards in the App come from businesses that pay us to show them, such as feed or machine dealers. Each one is marked Sponsored.

• They are shown to people in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, and to people whose location we do not know or who are outside India.
• We choose which card to show from the district you are in or looking at, the section (livestock, machines or fodder) and the kind of animal. We never use your exact location or your advertising ID for this.
• A business receives only daily totals: how many times its card was shown, tapped or reported in each district. It never receives your name, your number or your messages. If you call or WhatsApp a business yourself, it will see your number, as with any call.
• If you report a card, the App stops showing you that business’s cards for 90 days.
• A business’s shop page may list its dealers. We show a dealer only with that dealer’s written agreement.

We do not sell your personal information.

You can turn off sharing with our analytics partners. The Share usage data switch on the Profile tab stops the App sending anything to Google Analytics for Firebase and Meta, and clears the IDs they use from your phone. The App still keeps its own record of what you view on our servers, because that is what puts the most useful ads first for you.

3. Who we share it with

3.1 What other people can see

• Your profile — your name, profile photo, district and village.
• Your ads — anyone who uses the App, or opens your ad on kattutharai.com, can see it: its photos, video, details and price, its village and district, its distance from them, and a map point for it accurate to about 1 km. In the App, they can also hear its voice note.
• How many times your ad was opened — shown on the ad: to everyone once it reaches 5, and the exact number to you. Nobody, not even you, can see who opened it.
• Your requests to sellers — shown only to sellers who have a live ad for that animal within your distance and price. They see the animal, how many, your price, your note, the village and district, how far it is, and your first name. They do not see your phone number or your exact place. A seller replies by sending you one of their ads, and you choose whether to contact them.
• Your phone number is shown:
  • to everyone, on all your ads, if you turn on Show my phone on listings (it stays off unless you turn it on);
  • otherwise, to a signed-in person only after they tap Call, WhatsApp, Message or Place order on one of your ads. From then on, that person can see your number on all your ads.
• Buyers’ numbers are not shown to sellers in the App. A seller sees your number only if you call or WhatsApp them.
• Chats are seen by the two people in them. We can see a chat when we need to, for example to look into a report.
• Farm pages — the farm’s name, type, place, animals, description, photo and current ads are public in the App, and on kattutharai.com when we turn that on.

3.2 Companies that help us run Kattutharai

Each company gets only what it needs for its job:

Some of these companies keep data outside India, for example in the United States or elsewhere in Asia. Each one handles it under its own data-protection terms.

We also share information when the law requires it, for example a court order or a lawful request from the police. For business cards, see §2.1.

4. How long we keep it

• Your account, ads, chats, orders and favourites: until you delete them or your account.
• Voice notes: until you delete the voice note, its ad or your account. When you mark an ad sold, its voice note is deleted within 2 weeks.
• Requests to sellers: a request stays open for 30 days unless you renew or close it. We delete it 90 days after it ends.
• Records of what you do in the App, on our servers: 10 days for the ads you scroll past and the screens you visit; the record of which ads you opened, until that ad or your account is deleted (it counts the views on each ad and helps put the ads you are most likely to want first); and 90 days for everything else. They are deleted when you delete your account, except a few ranking records that we keep for up to 30 days with your account ID removed.
• Google Analytics for Firebase (Android): 14 months. Website analytics: up to 14 months.
• Meta: as long as Meta’s own policy for measuring ads allows.
• Crash reports: up to 90 days.
• Payment records: 7 years, as Indian tax law requires. If you delete your account, they are kept with the link to your account removed.
• Backups: we make a full copy of our database every night and keep each copy for 90 days. Until a copy is deleted, it can still hold something you have deleted.
• Registration details after you delete your account: 180 days. Indian law (Rule 3(1)(h) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021) requires us to keep the details you registered with — your phone number, email, name, profile photo, district, village and state, and the dates you joined and left — for 180 days after you close your account. They are then deleted automatically.
• Deleted ads, and the ads of a deleted account: 180 days. When an ad is permanently deleted — because you deleted it and the 5-day restore window passed, or because you deleted your account — we keep a copy of what it said (category, breed, age, weight, price, description, district and village) with its photos, video and voice note for 180 days, and then delete it automatically. We do not keep the ad’s map point. Nobody can browse or search this copy. We keep it only so we can act on a complaint that arrives after the ad is gone, such as a scam report or a lawful request from the police. Your chats are not kept.
• Reports of abuse: kept after the account or ad they are about is deleted, with a copy of what was reported, so we can stop abuse from happening again. A report holds no phone number. It can be linked back to a named person only during the 180 days above.

5. Your rights and choices

You can:

• See and change your profile at any time in the Profile tab.
• Show or hide your phone number on your ads with Show my phone on listings when you edit your profile.
• Delete an ad from My Ads, and restore it within 5 days. You can delete or record again an ad’s voice note when you edit the ad.
• Close a request to sellers at any time from My requests on the Profile tab.
• Delete your account from Profile → Delete account. Your profile, ads, favourites, chats and photos are removed from the App straight away, and nobody can see them again. Copies in our backups are deleted within 90 days. What we must keep for longer is listed in §4.
• Get a copy of your information, or ask us to correct or erase it, by writing to us (see §9).
• Turn off location at any time in your phone’s settings. You will need it again to post an ad, because an ad’s place comes from your phone’s location.
• Turn off the microphone for Kattutharai in your phone’s settings. The App needs it only to record a voice note.
• Stop sharing usage data with our analytics partners, with the Share usage data switch on the Profile tab.
• Reset or delete your advertising ID (Android): Settings → Privacy → Ads.
• Turn off notifications in your phone’s settings.
• Use your other rights under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — for example, to withdraw your consent, or to name someone who can use these rights for you.

6. Children

Kattutharai is for people aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18. If you think a child has signed up, tell us and we will remove the account.

7. Security

• Everything between the App, the website and our servers is sent over HTTPS.
• Our servers confirm every payment with Apple, Google Play or Cashfree; we never rely on the App’s word alone.
• Only the people who run Kattutharai can reach our systems, and only with keys.
• No system is completely safe. If a breach affects you, we will tell you within 72 hours of finding it.

8. Changes to this policy

We may change this policy as Kattutharai changes. We will tell you about important changes in the App, and change the “Last updated” date above. If you keep using Kattutharai after a change, the new policy applies to you.

9. Contact and complaints

For questions, requests about your information, or complaints:

Email: support@kattutharai.com
Phone and WhatsApp: +91 90037 33880
Address: Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Grievance Officer (under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and its Rules, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023):

Name: Suryaprakash
Designation: Founder
Email: support@kattutharai.com
Phone: +91 90037 33880
Address: Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

We acknowledge every complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 7 days.

10. Language

This policy is written in English. We also publish it in Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu and Hindi. If a translation differs from the English, the English version applies.