Privacy Policy

1. Information we collect

Account and verification

• Your institution email address. You sign in with a one-time code sent to it. Its domain tells us which institution you belong to.
• Your name and mobile number. We don’t currently verify mobile numbers.
• Your institution and its campus location.
• Profile photo, if you add one. We remove the photo’s hidden details (such as where it was taken) and resize it before uploading it.
• Your role (rider, driver or both) and your verification status, including whether your account is suspended.
• Your agreement to our terms: the versions of the Terms and this Privacy Policy you accepted, your confirmation that you are 18 or older, and when you gave them.
• College or staff ID image. Earlier versions of the app asked some members for one. We no longer ask for it. If you uploaded one, it stays private until you delete your account or ask us to delete it.

Location

• Riders. While you use the app, we use your phone’s precise location to show you on the map and to set a pickup point. The pickup and drop-off points you choose are saved with the ride.
• Drivers, when publishing a ride. We save your route’s start point, destination and road path, so we can match riders along the way.
• Drivers, during a ride. From the moment you accept a rider until the trip ends, your precise position is sent every few seconds to the rider or riders on that ride, so they can see you approach and follow the trip. We also save your latest position on your ride offer. Each update replaces the previous one, so we don’t keep a history of where you have been, and the position is cleared as soon as the ride offer ends.
• Location in the background (drivers only). During a ride, location sharing continues if you switch to another app or lock your phone. On Android, a persistent notification says “Sharing your location with your rider”. On iOS, the blue location indicator is shown. Sharing stops as soon as the trip ends. Travoa only asks for “while using the app” location permission. It does not collect your location in the background at any other time.
• Saved places (for example “Home” or “College”) that you choose to save: a label, an address and its coordinates. The last few places you searched for are kept on your phone only.

Rides

For each ride we record:

• the rider and driver;
• pickup and drop-off addresses and coordinates;
• the number of seats;
• request, acceptance, start, completion and cancellation times;
• the ride status and any cancellation reason;
• the distance and fare;
• the payment method and payment status, and the UPI transaction ID (UTR) if the rider enters one;
• the 4-digit PIN that starts the trip (only the rider can see it);
• an estimate of the CO₂ the shared ride saved.

Vehicles and driver documents

• Your vehicle’s type, make, model, colour, number plate and number of seats.
• Photos of your driving licence and vehicle registration certificate (RC), if you upload them, and the result of their review (approved or rejected, with any reason given).

Payments and driver wallet

• Fares. Riders pay drivers directly, by UPI or in cash. Travoa doesn’t receive the money, and we don’t see your bank or UPI account details: your UPI app handles the payment. We record how the ride was paid, whether the driver confirmed it, and any UTR the rider entered.
• Drivers’ UPI ID. If you drive, you can add a UPI ID and payee name so riders can pay you. Many UPI IDs contain a mobile number.
• Driver wallet. Each driver has a Travoa wallet. We keep its balance and a ledger of platform fees, top-ups, corrections and refunds, linked to the related rides.
• Top-ups through Razorpay. Drivers top up their wallet through Razorpay. You enter your card, UPI or bank details with Razorpay, not with us. To fill in the payment form for you, the app passes your name, email address and mobile number to Razorpay. We receive only the order and payment reference numbers, the amount and the payment status.
• Online fare payments. Paying a fare online through Razorpay is currently switched off. If we switch it on, the same Razorpay details as for top-ups will apply, and we will update this policy first.

Messages

Messages you send in a ride’s in-app chat, and when you sent them.

Ratings and feedback

The 1–5 star rating and optional comment you give after a trip, the ratings you receive, and your average rating.

Safety reports and blocks

• Reports you make about another member: who, the reason, the details you write, and the ride it concerns.
• Reports other members make about you, and what was decided. We don’t tell you who reported you.
• The list of members you have blocked.

Device and technical data

• Push notification token. This is an identifier from Firebase Cloud Messaging, so we can send you notifications such as new ride requests. It is cleared when you sign out.
• Crash reports. If the app crashes or hits an error, Firebase Crashlytics receives a report with technical details: what went wrong, your device model, operating system and app version, a Crashlytics installation identifier, and your Travoa user ID. We remove email addresses, phone numbers, keys and precise coordinates from the messages attached to these reports. You can turn crash reports off in the app (see section 7).
• Server logs. When the app talks to our servers, our hosting providers automatically record technical details such as your IP address, request times, and error details. We use these for security and troubleshooting.
• Abuse-prevention records. To stop spam and misuse, we briefly record your user ID and the time of certain actions, such as ride searches, place searches, ride offers, chat messages and reports.

What we don’t collect

Travoa does not access your contacts, call history, text messages or advertising ID. When you tap Call, an emergency number, Share trip or Pay by UPI, Travoa opens your phone’s dialler, share sheet or UPI app with the details filled in. Whatever you do there is not sent to us.

2. How we use it

• To run your account: creating it, signing you in with email codes, keeping your profile, and recording your agreement to our terms.
• To verify membership and drivers: confirming from your email domain that you belong to a participating institution, and letting your institution review drivers’ documents.
• To match rides: finding drivers whose route passes near your pickup and drop-off in the right direction, and calculating fares from distance and seats.
• To run trips: live driver location, the start PIN, in-app chat, calls between rider and driver, and push notifications about your rides.
• To handle payments: showing riders the driver’s UPI ID, recording fares and payment status, deducting platform fees from driver wallets, and processing top-ups, refunds and payment disputes.
• For safety and trust: ratings, reports and blocks, investigating reports, suspending accounts, preventing fraud and misuse, and enforcing our Terms.
• For institution reporting: giving your institution totals such as the number of rides and the CO₂ saved.
• To keep the app working: using crash reports and logs to find and fix bugs.
• For support and service messages: answering your requests and telling you about changes to the service.
• For legal reasons: keeping financial records, meeting our obligations and responding to lawful requests.

We process your personal data with your consent, which you give when you create an account (the app records it) and when you grant app permissions. We also process it for other uses permitted by law, such as complying with legal obligations and responding to emergencies. You can withdraw consent by turning off a permission or by deleting your account. Features that depend on that data will then stop working.

We don’t sell or rent your personal data. We don’t use it for advertising, and we don’t share it with data brokers.

3. Who can see it and who we share it with

Other Travoa members at your institution

• If you offer a ride, riders at your institution who search along your route see your name, profile photo, rating, vehicle (make, model, colour and number plate), whether you are a verified driver, where your ride ends, its departure time, and roughly how far it passes from their pickup and drop-off (rounded to 100 m). They don’t see where your ride starts.
• Other signed-in members of your institution can view your profile photo.
• Riders are not shown to other members until they request a ride. Members of other institutions can’t see your profile.

The person you ride with

When a rider requests a seat, the driver sees the rider’s name, photo and rating, the pickup and drop-off points, the seats and the fare. After that, for that ride, both of you see:

• each other’s name, profile photo and rating, and the driver’s vehicle and verified status;
• the pickup and drop-off points, the fare and the payment status;
• the chat messages for that ride;
• the rating left for the trip.

Only while the ride is under way (from the driver accepting it until the trip ends):

• you see each other’s mobile number, so you can call each other;
• the rider sees the driver’s live location.

The rider sees the start PIN and gives it to the driver to start the trip. After the trip, while it is unpaid, the rider sees the driver’s UPI ID and payee name, and the driver sees any UTR the rider entered.

The other person never sees your email address, your saved places or home address, your push token, or rides you share with anyone else.

Your institution’s Travoa administrators

Your institution can appoint administrators to manage its members on Travoa. Administrators can see:

• members’ names, institution email addresses, roles, verification status, when they joined, and their vehicle’s review status;
• for drivers who upload them: vehicle details and the driving licence and RC photos, so they can review them;
• the rides taken within the institution: status, times, pickup and drop-off addresses, distance, fare, payment status, the estimated CO₂ saved, the rider’s name and email address, and the driver’s name;
• reports made by or about members, including who made them;
• any college ID image a member uploaded in an earlier version of the app.

Administrators can’t see members’ mobile numbers, saved places, exact pickup or drop-off coordinates, live locations, start PINs, chat messages or UPI IDs. They can approve, reject or suspend accounts, approve or reject vehicles, and act on reports. Your institution handles this information under its own policies as well as ours.

Travoa staff

A small number of authorised Travoa staff can access account and ride data, using accounts protected by two-factor authentication. They do so only when it is needed for support, safety, verification, or running the service.

Service providers

These companies process data on our behalf, only to provide their service to us:

• Supabase. Database, sign-in and sign-in emails, private file storage for photos and documents, real-time trip updates, and server functions. Supabase privacy policy
• Google Maps Platform. Maps, place search, addresses and directions. The map itself is loaded from Google by your phone. Place searches, addresses and directions go through Travoa’s servers: Google receives the search text and the relevant coordinates from us, not from your phone. Google privacy policy
• Google Firebase Cloud Messaging. Delivering push notifications to your device, using your push token. A notification’s text can include details such as the rider’s name and the fare. Firebase privacy information
• Google Firebase Crashlytics. Collecting crash reports, as described in section 1.
• Google Fonts. The app may download the typefaces it displays the first time it runs. This shares your IP address with Google.
• Razorpay. Processing driver wallet top-ups, refunds and payment disputes, and online fare payments if we switch them on. Razorpay privacy policy

When you share a trip

If you use Share trip, you choose who receives the trip details and through which app. That app’s own privacy policy then applies.

Legal and safety reasons

We may disclose information if the law requires it, for example in response to a valid request from the police or a court. We may also disclose it when it is needed to protect someone’s life or safety, or to protect the rights of Travoa or its users.

Business transfers

If Travoa is merged, acquired or sells its assets, your data may transfer to the new owner under this policy. We will tell you before that happens.

4. Where your data is stored

Our database and files are hosted by Supabase in {{SUPABASE_REGION}}. Google, Firebase and Razorpay may process data in other countries. Where data is transferred outside India, we do so only as permitted by Indian law.

5. How long we keep it

• Account, profile, photo, vehicles, driver documents, saved places, UPI ID, consent record, block list and push token: kept while your account is open, and deleted when you delete your account.
• Driver’s live location: only the latest position is stored, and it is cleared when the ride offer ends.
• Ride offers: the start point and road path of a ride offer are deleted 30 days after it ends.
• Chat messages: deleted 90 days after the ride ends. Messages you sent are deleted earlier if you delete your account.
• Ride records: a ride is part of both people’s trip history, so it is not deleted when one of them deletes their account. Instead, that person’s name and profile are removed from it, and the app shows them as “Unknown”. After a year, the exact pickup and drop-off coordinates are reduced to an accuracy of about 100 m and the pickup and drop-off address texts are deleted. We keep ride records for both people’s history, for safety investigations and disputes, and for accounting.
• Payment and wallet records (fees, top-ups, refunds and the rides they relate to): kept for 8 years, because Indian tax and accounting law requires it. If you delete your account, your identity is removed from them.
• Safety reports: kept while needed to keep members safe. If you delete your account, your identity is removed from reports you made or that were made about you.
• Suspended accounts: if an account is suspended, we keep a one-way code (a hash) of its email address, even after the account is deleted, so the suspension can’t be avoided by signing up again. We delete it when the suspension is lifted.
• Crash reports: kept by Firebase Crashlytics for 90 days.
• Abuse-prevention records: deleted after 1 day. Sign-in attempts on the store-review demo accounts are kept for 30 days, with the email and IP address stored only as one-way codes.
• Backups and logs: deleted data may stay in encrypted backups and server logs for up to 30 days, until they are overwritten.
• Razorpay: Razorpay keeps its own payment records for as long as financial regulations require.

6. Deleting your account

In the app, open the Account tab, tap Delete account, and confirm. Your account is deleted immediately and you are signed out. You can’t delete it while you have an open ride request or a ride that hasn’t finished, a completed ride that hasn’t been paid for, or a driver wallet balance other than zero. The app tells you what to settle first.

If you no longer have the app, email us. See travoa.in/delete-account for the steps, and for exactly what is deleted and what is kept.

7. Your rights and choices

Under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and other applicable law, you can:

• Access a summary of the personal data we hold about you, and of who we have shared it with.
• Correct or update it. You can change your name, phone number, photo, saved places, vehicle and UPI ID in the app’s Account tab.
• Erase it, by deleting your account or by asking us to delete specific data.
• Withdraw consent at any time. This doesn’t affect processing that happened before you withdrew.
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you die or become unable to do so.
• Raise a grievance with our Grievance Officer (below). If you’re not satisfied with the outcome, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

To make a request, email {{CONTACT_EMAIL}} from your registered institution email address. We may need to confirm it’s you before acting. We will respond within 30 days.

You can also:

• turn crash reports off with the Share crash reports switch on the app’s Help screen;
• block another member, so you are no longer matched or able to contact each other;
• manage what the app can access in your phone’s settings: location, camera, photos and notifications. If you turn off location, Travoa can’t show you on the map or share a driver’s position. If you turn off notifications, you won’t hear about new ride requests.

8. Security

We protect your data in several ways:

• Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS).
• Database access rules limit each user to the records they are allowed to see. For example, the person you ride with gets your phone number only while the ride is under way.
• Profile photos, driver documents and ID images are stored privately and are opened only by the people listed in section 3.
• Administrative, payment and map keys are kept on our servers and never put in the app.
• Staff access is limited to what each person needs, and Travoa staff accounts require two-factor authentication.

No system is completely secure. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

9. Age limit

Travoa is for people aged 18 and over. When you sign up, you confirm that you are 18 or older, and we record that confirmation. We don’t knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If we learn that we have, we will delete it.

10. Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we will update the effective date and version above. If a change significantly affects how we use your data, we will tell you in the app or by email before it takes effect, and the app will ask you to accept the new version.

11. Contact and grievance officer

For questions, requests or complaints about your personal data, contact our Grievance Officer:

{{GRIEVANCE_OFFICER_NAME}}
{{LEGAL_ENTITY_NAME}}
{{REGISTERED_ADDRESS}}
Email: {{CONTACT_EMAIL}}