Bharatam | Terms of Use

Terms of Use

Welcome to Bharatam
Bharatam - India's first Social Network started, managed & developed by Indians that enable Indians to connect with each other, build communities and grow businesses. These Terms govern your use of Bharatam, Messenger and the other products, features, apps, services, technologies and software that we offer, except where we expressly state that separate terms (and not these) apply. These Products are provided to you by Bharatam.

We don't charge you to use Bharatam or the other products and services covered by these Terms & it will be FREE for forever. Instead, businesses and organisations pay us to show you ads for their products & services. By using our Products, you agree that we can show you ads that we think will be relevant to you and your interests. We use your limited personal data to help determine which ads to show you. Advertisers only gets location, gender, age & profile activeness filters to run their ads.

We don't sell your personal data to advertisers, and we don't share information that directly identifies you (such as your name, email address or other contact information) with advertisers unless you give us specific permission. Instead, advertisers can tell us things such as the kind of audience that they want to see their ads, and we show those ads to people who may be interested. We provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads that help them understand how people are interacting with their content.

1. The services, we provide

Our mission is to give people the power to build community & bring the India closer together. To help advance this mission, we provide the products and services described below to you:

1.1 Provide a personalised experience for you. Your experience on Bharatam is unlike anyone else's: from the posts, stories, events, ads and other content that you see in News Feed or our video platform to the Pages that you follow and other features that you might use, such as Trending, Marketplace and search. We use the data that we have – for example, about the connections you make, the choices and settings you select, and what you share and do on and off our Products – to personalise your experience.

1.2 Connect you with people and organisations that you care about. We help you find and connect with people, groups, businesses, organisations and others that matter to you across the Bharatam. We use the data that we have to make suggestions for you and others – for example, groups to join, events to attend, Pages to follow or send a message to, shows to watch and people who you may want to become friends with. Stronger ties make for better communities, and we believe that our services are most useful when people are connected to people, groups and organisations that they care about.

1.3 Empower you to express yourself and communicate about what matters to you. There are many ways to express yourself on Bharatam and to communicate with friends, family and others about what matters to you – for example, sharing status updates, photos, videos and stories across the Bharatam that you use, sending messages to a friend or several people, creating events or groups, or adding content to your profile.

1.4 Help you discover content, products and services that may interest you. We show you ads, offers and other sponsored content to help you discover content, products and services that are offered by the many businesses and organisations that use Bharatam.

1.5 Combat harmful conduct, and protect and support our community. People will only build community on Bharatam if they feel safe. We employ dedicated teams around the nation and develop advanced technical systems to detect misuse of our Products, harmful conduct towards others and situations where we may be able to help support or protect our community. If we learn of content or conduct like this, we will take appropriate action – for example, offering help, removing content, removing or restricting access to certain features, disabling an account or contacting law enforcement. We share data with govt agencies only when we detect misuse or harmful conduct by someone using one of our Products.

1.6 Research ways to make our services better. We engage in research to develop, test and improve our Products. This includes analysing the data we have about our users and understanding how people use our Products, for example by conducting surveys and testing and troubleshooting new features.

1.7 Provide consistent and seamless experiences across the Bharatam Company Products. Our Products help you find and connect with people, groups, businesses, organisations and others that are important to you. We design our systems so that your experience is consistent and seamless across the different Bharatam that you use. For example, we use data about the people you engage with on Bharatam to make it easier for you to connect with them on our other products, and we enable you to communicate with businesses that you follow on Bharatam through Messenger.

1.8 Enable global access to our services. To operate our global service, we need to store and distribute content and data in our data centres and systems located in India. This infrastructure may be operated or controlled by Bharatam.

2. How our services are funded

Instead of paying to use Bharatam & the other products and services we offer, by using the Bharatam Products covered by these Terms, you agree that we can show you ads that businesses and organisations pay us to promote on and off the Bharatam. We use your personal data, such as information about your location, gender, age & profile activeness filters to run their ads, to show you ads that are more relevant to you.

Protecting people's privacy is central to how we've designed our ad system. This means that we can show you relevant and useful ads without telling advertisers who you are. We don't sell your personal data. We allow advertisers to tell us things such as their business goal, and the kind of audience that they want to see their ads (for example, people between the ages of 18-35 who like cycling). We then show their ad to people who might be interested.

We also provide advertisers with reports about the performance of their ads to help them understand how people are interacting with their content on and off Bharatam. For example, we provide general demographic and interest information to advertisers (for example, that an ad was seen by a woman between the ages of 25 and 34 who lives in Madras and likes software engineering) to help them better understand their audience. We don't share information that directly identifies you (information such as your name or email address that by itself can be used to contact you or identifies who you are) unless you give us specific permission.

We collect and use your personal data in order to provide the services described above for you. You have controls over the types of ads and advertisers you see, and the types of information we use to determine which ads we show you.

3. Your commitments to Bharatam and it's community.

We provide these services to you and others to help advance our mission. In exchange, we need you to make the following commitments:

3.1 Who can use Bharatam?

When people stand behind their opinions and actions, our community is safer and more accountable. For this reason, you must:

use the same name that you use in everyday life;
provide accurate information about yourself;
create only one account (your own) and use your timeline for personal purposes; and
not share your password, give access to your Bharatam account to others or transfer your account to anyone else (without our permission).

We try to make Bharatam broadly available to everyone, but you cannot use Bharatam if:

You are under 15 years old.
You are a convicted sex offender.
We've previously disabled your account for violations of our Terms or Policies.
You are prohibited from receiving our products, services or software under applicable laws.

3.2 What you can share and do on Bharatam?

We want people to use Bharatam to express themselves and to share content that is important to them, but not at the expense of the safety and well-being of others or the integrity of our community. You therefore agree not to engage in the conduct described below (or to facilitate or support others in doing so):

That is unlawful, misleading, discriminatory or fraudulent.
That infringes or violates someone else's rights, including their intellectual property rights. You may not use our Products to do or share anything:
That breaches these Terms, our community standards and other Terms and Policies that apply to your use of Bharatam.

You may not upload viruses or malicious code, or do anything that could disable, overburden or impair the proper working or appearance of our Products. You may not access or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to access data that you do not have permission to access.

We can remove or restrict access to content that is in violation of these provisions without any explanation to user. We also can remove or restrict access to your content, services or information if we determine that doing so is reasonably necessary to avoid or mitigate adverse legal or regulatory impacts to Bharatam.

3.3 The permissions you give us

We need certain permissions from you to provide our services:

3.3.1. Permission to use content that you create and share: Some content that you share or upload, such as photos or videos, may be protected by intellectual property laws.

3.3.2. You own the intellectual property rights (things such as copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you create and share on Bharatam and the other Bharatam products you use. Nothing in these Terms takes away the rights you have to your own content. You are free to share your content with anyone else, wherever you want. However, to provide our services, we need you to give us some legal permissions (known as a ‘licence') to use this content. This is solely for the purposes of providing and improving our Products and services as described in Section 1 above.

3.3.3. Specifically, when you share, post or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free and worldwide licence to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy settings). This means, for example, that if you share a photo on Bharatam, you give us permission to store, copy and share it with others (again, consistent with your settings) such as service providers that support our service or other Bharatam Products you use.This licence will end when your content is deleted from our systems.

You can delete content individually or all at once by deleting your account. Learn more about how to delete your account. You can download a copy of your data at any time before deleting your account.

When you delete content, it's no longer visible to other users; however, it may continue to exist elsewhere on our systems where:

Immediate deletion is not possible due to technical limitations (in which case, your content will be deleted within a maximum of 90 days from when you delete it);
your content has been used by others in accordance with this licence and they have not deleted it (in which case, this licence will continue to apply until that content is deleted); or
Where immediate deletion would restrict our ability to: investigate or identify illegal activity or breaches of our Terms and Policies (for example, to identify or investigate misuse of our Products or systems); comply with a legal obligation, such as the preservation of evidence; or comply with a request of a judicial or administrative authority, law enforcement or a government agency; in which case, the content will be retained for no longer than is necessary for the purposes for which it has been retained (the exact duration will vary on a case-by-case basis).
In each of the cases, this licence will continue until the content has been fully deleted.

4. Limits on using our intellectual property

If you use content covered by intellectual property rights that we have and make available in our Products (for example, images, designs, videos or sounds that we provide, which you add to content that you create or share on Bharatam), we retain all rights to that content (but not yours). You can only use our copyrights or trademarks as expressly permitted by us or with our prior written permission. You must obtain our written permission (or permission under an open-source licence) to modify, create derivative works of, decompile or otherwise attempt to extract source code from us.

5. Additional provisions

5.1. Updating our Terms: We work constantly to improve our services and develop new features to make our Products better for you and our community. As a result, we may need to update these Terms from time to time to accurately reflect our services and practices. We will only make changes if the provisions are no longer appropriate or if they are incomplete, and only if the changes are reasonable and take due account of your interests. We will notify you (for example, by email or through our Products) at least 30 days before we make changes to these Terms and give you an opportunity to review them before they go into effect, unless changes are required by law. Once any updated Terms are in effect, you will be bound by them if you continue to use our Products. We hope that you will continue using our Products, but if you do not agree to our updated Terms and no longer want to be part of the Bharatam community, you can delete your account at any time.

5.2. Account suspension or termination: We want Bharatam to be a place where people feel welcome and safe to express themselves and share their thoughts and ideas. If we determine that you have clearly, seriously or repeatedly breached our Terms or Policies, including in particular our Community Standards, we may suspend or permanently disable access to your account. We may also suspend or disable your account if you repeatedly infringe other people's intellectual property rights or where we are required to do so for legal reasons. Where we take such action, we'll let you know and explain any options you have to request a review, unless doing so may expose us or others to legal liability; harm our community of users; compromise or interfere with the integrity or operation of any of our services, systems or Products; or where we are restricted due to technical limitations; or where we are prohibited from doing so for legal reasons. If you delete or we disable your account, these Terms shall terminate as an agreement between you and us, but the following provisions will remain in place: 3 & 4.

5.3. Limits on liability: We work hard to provide the best Products we can and to specify clear guidelines for everyone who uses them. Our Products, however, are provided "as is", and we make no guarantees that they will always be safe, secure or error-free, or that they will function without disruptions, delays or imperfections. To the extent permitted by law, we also DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not control or direct what people and others do or say, and we are not responsible for their actions or conduct (whether online or offline) or any content that they share (including offensive, inappropriate, obscene, unlawful and other objectionable content). We cannot predict when issues may arise with our Products. Accordingly, our liability shall be limited to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, and under no circumstances will we be liable to you for any lost profits, revenues, information or data, or consequential, special, indirect, exemplary, punitive or incidental damages arising out of or related to these Terms or the Bharatam Products, even if we have been advised of the possibility of such damages.

5.4. Disputes: We try to provide clear rules so that we can limit or hopefully avoid disputes between you and us. If a dispute does arise, however, it's useful to know up front where it can be resolved and what laws will apply. If you are a consumer, the laws of the country in which you reside will apply to any claim, cause of action or dispute that you have against us that arises out of or relates to these Terms or the Bharatam Products, and you may resolve your claim in any competent court in that country that has jurisdiction over the claim. In all other cases, you agree that the claim must be resolved exclusively in the Court located in the New Delhi, India. You also agree that you submit to the personal jurisdiction of either of these courts for the purpose of litigating any such claim, and that the laws of the State of Delhi will govern these Terms and any claim, without regard to conflict of law provisions.

5.5. Other

These Terms (formerly known as the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities) make up the entire agreement between you and Bharatam, regarding your use of our Products. They supersede any prior agreements.
Some of the Products that we offer are also governed by supplemental Terms. If you use any of those Products, supplemental terms will be made available and will become part of our agreement with you. For instance, if you access or use our Products for commercial or business purposes, such as buying ads, selling products, developing apps, managing a group or Page for your business, or using our measurement services, you must agree to our Commercial Terms. If you post or share content containing music, you must comply with our Music Guidelines. To the extent that any supplemental Terms conflict with these Terms, the supplemental Terms shall govern to the extent of the conflict.
If any portion of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the remaining portion will remain in full force and effect. If we fail to enforce any of these Terms, it will not be considered a waiver. Any amendment to or waiver of these Terms must be made in writing and signed by us.
You will not transfer any of your rights or obligations under these Terms to anyone else without our consent.
You may designate a person (called a legacy contact) to manage your account if it is memorialised. Only your legacy contact or a person who you have identified in a valid will or similar document expressing clear consent to disclose your content upon death or incapacity will be able to seek disclosure from your account after it is memorialised.
These Terms do not confer any third-party beneficiary rights. All of our rights and obligations under these Terms are freely assignable by us in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, or by operation of law or otherwise.
You should know that we may need to change the username for your account in certain circumstances (for example, if someone else claims the username and it appears unrelated to the name that you use in everyday life). We will inform you in advance if we have to do this and explain why.
We always appreciate your feedback and other suggestions about our products and services. But you should know that we may use them without any restriction or obligation to compensate you, and we are under no obligation to keep them confidential.
We reserve all rights not expressly granted to you.

6. Trademark: The trademark “BHARATAM” is under the license of use from Bharatam Research Development India.

Date of Publishing: 26 January 2021