Privacy Policy

Lokam is operated by Arnanda Technologies Private Limited, Flat No. 501, Sai Nilayam, H.No. 2-108, Plot Nos. 481, 482 & 483, Chandanagar, Hyderabad, Rangareddy, Telangana 500050, India. We are the data controller (or, under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the “Data Fiduciary”) responsible for the personal data described below.

For anything in this policy — including access, correction, or erasure requests — contact shop.lokam@gmail.com.

We collect only what the app needs to work:

• Your mobile number. This is your identity on Lokam. We verify it with a one-time code and store it against your account.
• Your name and address. Your name, your block and flat, and a delivery address, so shops can deliver to you. You provide these as you go — not up front.
• A place you register, if you register one. If the place you live in is not listed and you add it while creating a shop, we store what you tell us about it — its name, kind, street address, area, city, state, PIN code and coordinates — and your mobile number against it, so we know who registered it and can reach you about it. A place shared by several households is reviewed by us and then becomes visible to other residents. A house used by a single household is not given a public page and is not listed for anyone to browse; its address is still used to work out which shoppers are near your shop.
• Your location. Either the coordinates your device reports when you tap “use my location”, or the community or area you pick. We store this on your account and in a cookie so we can rank shops and services that can actually reach you. If you ask to be notified when shops start serving your area, we also store those coordinates and an area name so we know where demand is.
• Your Google account, if you use it to sign in. We store Google's stable account identifier and your email address. We do not receive your Google password.
• A notification token. If you allow notifications, we store the device token issued by Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging so we can send you order and request updates.
• What you create in the app. Your orders, service requests, reviews, community board listings, and any photos you upload, linked to your account.
• Reports and blocks you make. If you report a community board listing, we store what you reported, the reason you gave, and that it was you — so our team can act on it and see if the same listing has been reported before. If you block a neighbour, we store that too, so we can keep you apart. The person you report or block is not told it was you.
• Crash reports and how you use the app. In our mobile app, when something fails we receive the error and the sequence of screens that led to it. We also record which features you use — that you viewed a product, added to your cart, placed an order, or subscribed — together with your device model, operating system, app version, and language. These records carry your Lokam account identifier so we can tell one person's session from another's. They never carry your name, mobile number, or address.

• We do not sell or rent your personal data.
• We do not run advertising, and there are no advertising or ad-tracking SDKs in the app. We do use crash reporting and product analytics — both named below — to find bugs and see which features get used. Neither builds an advertising profile, and neither shares anything with an ad network.
• We do not record your screen. Our analytics provider offers session recording; it is switched off in the app.
• We do not store your card, UPI, or bank credentials — see Payments below.
• We do not track your location in the background. Location is read only when you ask for it, while you are using the app.

To sign you in and keep you signed in; to show shops and services that can reach your location; to place orders and service requests and let the business fulfil them; to notify you about their progress; to show reviews and community board posts you chose to publish; and to keep the platform safe and working.

Payments for your orders happen directly between you and the shop or provider — typically over UPI. Lokam does not process, receive, or store those payments, and never sees your UPI ID, card, or bank details.

Separately, businesses pay Lokam a listing fee. Those payments are handled by Razorpay, who process the card or UPI details directly; we receive only the result of the payment, never the instrument.

We share personal data only with the service providers that make the app function, and only for that purpose:

• The shop or provider you order from — your name, delivery address, mobile number, and order, so they can fulfil it. This is the point of the app.
• Google — Firebase Cloud Messaging to deliver notifications, and Google Sign-In if you choose it.
• ping4sms — our SMS gateway. To sign you in, we pass them your mobile number and the one-time code, which they deliver to you as a text message.
• MSG91 and Meta (WhatsApp) — if you opted in, to send you WhatsApp messages about your account and your orders. We hand the message to MSG91, who deliver it over Meta’s WhatsApp network; both receive your mobile number and the contents of the message. Your sign-in codes do not travel this way — those go by SMS, through the gateway above.
• Razorpay — for business listing-fee payments only.
• OpenStreetMap — when you use your location, we send the coordinate to their Nominatim service to turn it into an area name (“Gachibowli”). We send the coordinate only — not your name, mobile number, or anything else that identifies you, and the request goes from our servers, not from your phone.
• Google Maps Platform — when you search for your building or shop by name, we send what you type, and the coordinate we are searching around, to Google’s Places service to get the list of matches. As with OpenStreetMap, we send only that — not your name, mobile number, or anything else that identifies you — and the request goes from our servers, not from your phone.
• Sentry — crash reporting for our mobile app. When the app fails, Sentry receives the error, the app version, your device model and operating system, the screens you visited just before it, and your Lokam account identifier. It does not receive your name, mobile number, or address.
• PostHog — product analytics for our mobile app, on their European Union servers. It receives the in-app actions described above and the same account identifier, and likewise never your name, mobile number, or address.
• Cloudflare and Railway — image storage and application hosting.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it. Our systems are hosted outside India, so your data may be processed abroad by the providers above.

We keep your account data for as long as your account exists. Orders and their associated details are retained after that as business records.

Please read this carefully: deleting your account in the app closes it and signs you out, but it does not by itself erase your record — your mobile number, name, and address are retained so that order history stays intact for you and for the businesses you bought from. If you want your personal data actually erased, we will do that on request.

How to delete your account and request erasure →

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you may ask us for a copy of your personal data, ask us to correct or complete it, ask us to erase it, and raise a grievance about how we handle it. Email shop.lokam@gmail.com and we will respond within 30 days.

Lokam is not intended for children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect their personal data. If you believe a child has given us data, write to us and we will remove it.

If we change what we collect, share, or retain, we will update this page and move the effective date above. Material changes will be notified in the app.