Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Brouz Hyperlocal Services Private Limited, 6/31, 2nd Main Road, Murugan Nagar, Kolathur, Chennai – 600099 is responsible for your personal data on Brouz. This policy follows the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Information Technology Act, 2000.

2. What we collect

• Your mobile number, and your name. Email and a profile photo if you add them.
• Your location, to show services near you. On the website, if you allow it, your browser's location is used on your device only to pick your nearest area — the location itself is never sent to us.
• Providers: the addresses you add, your PAN and your name as per PAN, your UPI ID or bank account for payouts, and any licence or qualification you choose to add.
• Customers who choose delivery: the address where the provider should come.
• Your bookings, payments, ratings and reviews, and the messages you send in Brouz chat.
• Which listings and provider pages are viewed, counted once a day, so providers can see how their listings are doing.
• Device details needed to send you notifications.
• How the app is used, without knowing who you are: which screens are opened and steps such as searching, booking and paying, with the app version, phone type and screen size. The app uses a random number it makes the first time it opens — never your account, number or exact location. For people who are logged in we add only the name of the neighbourhood they are in (like "Adyar").
• If you use Chat with Brouz, our support chat: what you write to us and your rating of the chat. In the app it is linked to your account (name, mobile number and, if you added it, email). On the website we ask for your name and mobile number, so we can call you back.

3. Why we use it

• To run bookings, payments, payouts and refunds, and to resolve problems.
• To show services near you and keep search accurate.
• To verify providers and stop anyone using someone else’s PAN or bank account.
• To keep Brouz safe: we check new listings (partly with automated tools), hide contact details in chat, and review accounts that repeatedly try to take payments outside Brouz.
• To answer your questions in Chat with Brouz. An automated assistant answers first and, in the app, can look up your own orders, payouts and listings to do so. It cannot refund, cancel or change anything, and you can ask for a person at any time.
• To follow up concerns you report about a booking or another person.
• To understand how Brouz is used and where to grow it: counts such as how many people signed up or ordered in each Chennai neighbourhood. For this we keep only the name of the neighbourhood you were in when you signed up and when you booked (like "Adyar") — never your exact location — and the results are only ever totals, never about one person.
• To meet tax and legal duties.

We do not sell your data and do not use it for advertising.

4. Who sees your data

• Customers see a provider’s first name, photo, area name and ratings — never the provider’s exact address.
• A provider sees a customer’s exact address only when the customer chooses delivery.
• Phone numbers, emails and payment details are never shown to the other side. Chat hides them automatically.
• Our partners, only for what they do for us: Razorpay (payments, payouts, refunds), Setu (PAN verification), our SMS and email providers (one-time passwords and receipts), Google (notifications and maps), Anthropic (checking the text of new listings, and the automated assistant in Chat with Brouz, which reads your support messages and the order details it looks up) and Amazon Web Services (hosting, in India).
• Chat with Brouz runs on our own servers in India. Concerns or feedback you share with us about another person stay with Brouz — they are never shown to that person.
• Government authorities, only when the law requires it.

5. How we protect it

• PAN and bank account numbers are encrypted when stored. The app only ever shows the last 4 characters of a PAN.
• All data is sent over encrypted connections and stored on servers in India.
• Chat messages are stored on our servers, not on your phone, so nothing is left behind on a shared phone after you log out.
• Only authorised Brouz staff can access personal data, and access to private chats is logged.
• If you type a one-time password, PAN or card number in Chat with Brouz in the app, it is hidden before it reaches our support team.

6. How long we keep it

• For as long as your account is active.
• Support chats, and concerns you report, for as long as your account is active or as long as needed to settle a complaint about a booking.
• Technical logs of what the app sends to our servers and gets back — with passwords, PAN, bank and payment details and chat messages left out — are kept for 180 days, as Indian cyber-security rules require, to fix problems and keep Brouz secure.
• When you delete your account, we remove your name, email, photo and payout details straight away, and replace your phone number so it can be used for a new account.
• Records of bookings and payments are kept as the law requires. A provider’s PAN and name as per PAN are kept for 8 years after deletion for tax purposes, then deleted.

7. Your rights

• Ask for a summary of the data we hold about you.
• Correct your details in the app, or ask us to.
• Delete your account from Profile → Settings in the app.
• Withdraw consent you have given, by writing to our Grievance Officer.
• Nominate someone to use these rights for you.

8. This website, the app and cookies

brouz.in does not use advertising or tracking cookies. It remembers the area you pick in your own browser only. It sets one cookie with a random number, so that a page view is counted once a day — it is not linked to your name or phone number.

We count visits to brouz.in with Umami, an analytics tool we run on our own server. It uses no cookies and does not store your IP address: we see totals such as how many people visited, which pages they opened, which buttons they tapped and what they searched for on the site, the website or campaign link they came from, their city, device and browser — never who you are. If your browser asks sites not to track you, your visits are not counted.

The app counts its use the same way, in the same Umami on our own server: anonymous screens and steps, linked to a random number the app makes the first time it opens, never to your account. No IP address is passed on.

9. Children

Brouz accounts are for adults (18+). We do not knowingly collect data from children. A parent booking a service for a child, such as tuition, books it from their own account.

10. Questions or complaints

Grievance Officer: Ashik Basheer, ashik@brouz.in

Brouz Hyperlocal Services Private Limited, 6/31, 2nd Main Road, Murugan Nagar, Kolathur, Chennai – 600099

We acknowledge complaints within 48 hours. If you are not satisfied with our reply, you can complain to the Data Protection Board of India.