Legal

Privacy Policy

Effective 8 August 2026 · Vidhilekha Lab LLP · India only

This policy describes how Bharat School Ride handles the personal data of parents, guardians, and children — on this website and in the Bharat School Ride service. If you drive for us, the notice that applies to you is our Partner Privacy Notice.

Bharat School Ride is offered only in India. This policy is written for Indian law and applies only to users in India.

I. Overview

1. Who this policy applies to

This policy applies to you if you:

• visit this website or join the early-access waitlist;
• message us on WhatsApp or contact our support team;
• register as a parent or guardian and use the Bharat School Ride parent app; or
• are a child travelling on a Bharat School Ride route, registered by a parent or guardian.

2. Who is responsible for your data

Vidhilekha Lab LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in India, operates Bharat School Ride and is the Data Fiduciary for the personal data described here. You are the Data Principal. Contact: info@vidhilekhalab.com.

3. The short version

• We collect what a school-transport safety service needs: who your child is, where they get on and off, and what happened on the ride.
• The vehicle is tracked during active school trips. We do not track children's personal devices, and nothing is tracked outside trip hours.
• We never sell, rent, or trade personal data.
• Ride and child data is never used for advertising. This website does use standard advertising measurement — see section 8.

II. Data we collect

4. Data you give us

• Waitlist details — your name, email address, and optionally your phone number and any note you add, when you join the early-access waitlist.
• Account details — your name, mobile number, and email address when you register as a parent or guardian.
• Child profile — your child's name, class, school, photograph, and pickup and drop points, provided by you or by the school with your consent.
• Emergency contacts — the numbers you want us to call if something goes wrong on a ride.
• Communications — messages you send us on WhatsApp, support requests, and feedback or complaints about a ride or a driver.

5. Data created when you use the service

• Trip records. The vehicle's location during your child's active trip, boarding and drop events with timestamps, attendance, and the route taken.
• Alerts. A record of the WhatsApp and app notifications we sent you and when.
• Device and app data. Device model, operating system version, app version, and crash and diagnostic logs from the parent app.
• Website usage. Pages viewed, approximate location derived from your IP address, device and browser type, and how you arrived at the site.

Tracking runs from the driver's smartphone during active school trips and stops when the trip ends. We do not track children's personal devices, and we do not build behavioural profiles of children.

6. Data we receive from others

• Schools and societies — where a school or residents' association arranges routes, the student, route, and stop information they share with us, with your consent.
• Partner drivers — trip events, attendance, and incident reports from the ride.
• The other parent or guardian — where two guardians are registered for the same child, each can see that child's ride information.

III. How we use your data

7. Purposes

• Running rides. To assign your child to a route, show you the ride live, send pickup and drop alerts, and mark attendance.
• Safety and emergencies. To reach you and your emergency contacts, respond to an incident, and act on unsafe driving.
• Accountability. To investigate a complaint about a ride, a driver, or a vehicle, and to keep the safety and inspection record behind the service.
• Early access. To contact you about early access, road-safety workshops in your society, and launches on your routes, and to plan routes and onboarding capacity.
• Support. To answer your questions and resolve problems.
• Legal. To meet legal obligations and respond to lawful requests from authorities.
• Improving the service. To fix bugs and improve the apps and this website, using aggregated or de-identified data wherever it will do.

We do not sell or rent personal data, and we do not use ride or child data for advertising.

8. Cookies, analytics, and advertising measurement

This website uses Google Analytics (GA4) to understand how visitors use it, and Google Ads conversion tracking to measure how many people who arrive from one of our advertisements go on to join the waitlist. Both use cookies and similar technologies and are processed by Google under its own privacy policy.

This applies to this website only. Ride data, trip locations, and anything about a child are never used for advertising, never shared with advertising platforms, and never used to target advertisements at children. You can block these cookies in your browser settings without affecting the service.

9. Children's data

A child profile exists only with the consent of a parent or guardian, given when you register your child. Full details are visible only to the child's registered parents or guardians and to authorised operations staff. Partner drivers see only what a safe pickup and drop requires: the child's name, photograph, and stop.

We do not use children's data for advertising, we do not target advertisements at children, and we do not monitor children's behaviour beyond the trip records described in section 5. You can withdraw your consent at any time, though doing so means we can no longer carry your child on a route.

IV. Sharing and disclosure

10. Who we share data with

• Partner drivers — your child's name, photograph, and stop, and a contact number for the ride. Drivers do not see your home address beyond the stop, your email, or details of your other children.
• Schools and societies — attendance and route information for the routes they are responsible for.
• Service providers — see section 11.
• Authorities — police, transport authorities, or courts, where the law requires it or where it is needed to respond to an emergency or a serious safety incident.
• In a business transfer — if the business or part of it is transferred, personal data may move with it, subject to this policy.

11. Service providers

• WhatsApp / Meta — delivery of ride alerts over the WhatsApp Business API.
• Google Firebase and Google Maps — real-time location streaming and maps.
• SMS provider — one-time passwords for login only.
• Google Analytics and Google Ads — website usage statistics and advertising measurement, on this website only.

Each provider receives only what its function requires and is bound by its own privacy terms and our agreements with it.

12. Where your data is kept

Bharat School Ride operates only in India and your data is stored and processed in India. Where a service provider processes data outside India, we do so only as permitted by Indian law and under contractual protections.

V. Retention and deletion

13. How long we keep things

• Waitlist details — kept until the service launches in your area or until you ask us to remove them. You can opt out of further contact at any time by replying to any message or emailing us.
• Account and child profiles — kept while your account is active, and deleted on request once your child stops using the service.
• Trip and attendance records — kept for the duration of the active service plus 12 months, then deleted or anonymised.
• Live location — retained as part of the trip record; the high-frequency location stream is purged on a rolling basis.
• Incident records — kept while the incident is unresolved and for as long afterwards as the law requires.

14. Deleting your data

You can ask us to delete your account and personal data at any time — see Delete Account or email info@vidhilekhalab.com. We will delete what we are not required to keep. Records tied to a legal obligation or an unresolved safety incident are retained for as long as that requirement lasts, and then deleted.

VI. Your choices and rights

15. Your rights

• Access — ask for a summary of the personal data we hold about you and your child, and who we have shared it with.
• Correction — have inaccurate or incomplete data corrected or updated.
• Erasure — ask us to delete data we no longer need to keep.
• Withdraw consent — withdraw a consent you gave, including consent to WhatsApp alerts or to your child's profile. Some withdrawals mean we can no longer provide the service safely.
• Nominate — nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapacitated.
• Grievance redressal — raise a complaint with us, as below.

Write to info@vidhilekhalab.com — we respond within 30 days.

16. Controls in the app

• Notifications. Registering your number is consent to receive ride safety alerts. You can withdraw it at any time by contacting us, and you can turn off non-essential notifications while keeping safety alerts.
• Emergency contacts. You can add, change, or remove them at any time.
• Cookies. Analytics and advertising cookies on this website can be blocked in your browser without affecting the service.

VII. Security, grievances, and changes

17. Security

Data moves over encrypted connections (HTTPS/TLS). Access inside our team is role-based, and logins use phone OTP. If a breach affects your personal data, we will notify you and the authorities as required by law.

18. Grievance officer

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

19. Changes to this policy

We will announce material changes on this website and, once the service is live, in the app or by WhatsApp. The effective date above always reflects the latest version.