Privacy Policy

1. What information do we collect?

In short: We collect the personal information you give us when you use Sakhi, and your location and recordings only while you choose to share them.

Personal information you disclose to us

We collect personal information that you provide to us when you register, set up your safety circle, start a journey, raise an alert, ask for help, or contact us. Depending on the features you use, this includes:

• Account details. Your mobile number and, if you give it, your name. You sign in with a one-time code sent to you on WhatsApp. Your safety secret (a PIN or a phrase you use to stop an alert) is stored only as a one-way hash, never in readable form.
• Emergency contacts. For each person you add: their name, mobile number, how they are related to you, and whether they have agreed to receive your alerts. Please add only people who are happy to be contacted — each one receives a message saying who added them, and can decline.
• Journey details. Where you are going and coming from, the kind of vehicle, and — only if you enter them — the vehicle’s registration number and the driver’s name. You may add up to four ride photos (for example, the number plate); location details the camera stores inside a photo are removed before upload.
• Alerts. When an alert was raised and how (a tap, your voice, or your phone losing contact), your location at that moment, the nearest police station and hospital we looked up for you, whom we notified, and how the alert ended.
• Audio and video recordings, only if you switch them on. Audio is off unless you turn it on before a journey. If you do, your phone records for the whole journey, because the minutes before an emergency are often the ones that matter. Alert video is also off unless you turn it on; it records from the back camera only while an alert is open. A recording captures anyone speaking nearby, such as a driver, so please let them know they are being recorded; on the website, Sakhi shows a notice you can show them.
• Your voice phrase, if you set one. The recordings of you saying it are sent once to our voice-detection service, which keeps only the words it heard. We keep the same words so we can show you what was saved — never the recordings.
• Requests for help. When you ask a safe place to stop or a roadside helper or garage for help: your location, what you need (for example, your vehicle type and the problem), any note or chat messages you send, your rating and any report you make about the business, and — if you choose to tell us — the price you paid.
• Service bookings. The garage, day, time slot, your vehicle and model, the work requested, any note, and the invoice the garage issues to you.
• Community reviews. The name you type, your star rating and your review. These are shown publicly; your phone number never is.
• Support requests. What you write to our support team and our replies.

If you are a protector

Your name and mobile number, the result and date of your identity check, the type of ID you used and its last four characters, the checking provider’s reference, whether you are available, your alert area, and your live position while you choose to share it from the protector page. Your full ID number, your date of birth and your selfie are used for the identity check and are not kept.

If you list a venue, or are a roadside helper or garage

The business’s mobile number, the name and role of the person who registered it, the business name, address and map location (taken from Google Maps), opening hours, the services, vehicles and prices you offer, photos you add, and your GSTIN if you issue invoices through Sakhi. For verification we record which checks were done, by whom and when, the type of document read out to us and its last four characters, and how far the registering phone was from the listed location (a distance, never a position). For a helper’s staff, we keep each person’s name, mobile number, photo, ID type, and the dates of their police verification — with their consent to be shown by name and photo to the people they help.

If you try the voice test without an account

The homepage lets anyone try voice detection. Your browser gets a random guest name (like “Guest 4F2A”) and a secret kept in a cookie, of which we store only a scrambled copy. For each test we store when you took it, whether Sakhi would have raised an alert, the detector’s confidence, how many seconds it took, and your answer to whether an alert was warranted. We do not store what you said, the audio, a phone number, your IP address or anything about your device. Nothing from a test is ever sent to anyone.

Sensitive information

When necessary, with your consent or as otherwise permitted by applicable law (including the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and any rules made under it), we process the following categories of sensitive personal information:

• precise location data, and the movement history it forms
• audio and video recordings, and your voice phrase
• identity-document details (type and last four characters only) of protectors, business representatives and helper staff

If you give us information about another person, such as an emergency contact, you confirm that you are entitled to do so. All personal information you provide to us must be true, complete and accurate.

Information automatically collected

• Location. While a journey is on, your phone sends its position about every twenty seconds, and every few seconds during an alert. The Android app shares location in the background only through a notification that stays on screen while you share; it never asks for “Allow all the time” access. We do not collect your location when you are not sharing it.
• Device information (Android app). A random installation ID, a push-notification token, the app version, and when the app last checked in. During a journey we also record your battery level and when your phone was last heard from, so an alert can say why contact may have been lost.
• Log and usage data. Our servers record technical information needed to operate and secure the Services, such as errors, request timings and a record of each message and call we sent (to whom, when, and whether it was delivered). We remove phone numbers from our application logs, and we use a keyed hash of your IP address, rather than the address itself, to limit abuse.
• Diagnostics in the Android app. Crash reports, and a short list of product events (such as which screens work and which do not) tied to a random install ID. These never include your location, contacts, phone number, name or anything you type. You can turn usage sharing off in You → Privacy and your data.
• An activity record. A history of events on your account (for example, “journey started” or “alert sent”), holding identifiers but never message content, so that what happened during an incident can be shown later.

Information collected from other sources

• Google Maps Platform: addresses for the points on your journey, the nearest police station and hospital, traffic to your destination, and the name, address and location of listed businesses.
• Messaging and calling providers: whether each message or call was accepted and delivered, and whether a call was answered.
• Our voice-detection service: when it detects a call for help, the decision, its confidence and the words it heard, which are stored on that alert and shown to you.

2. How do we process your information?

In short: We process your information to keep you safe and to provide, secure and improve our Services. We do not use it for advertising.

We process your personal information for a variety of reasons, depending on how you interact with our Services, including:

• To create and manage your account and sign you in.
• To share your journey with the emergency contacts you chose, through a live tracking link.
• To raise and deliver alerts. When an alert is raised, we message your contacts on WhatsApp with your location and tracking link, and phone each contact who has agreed to receive your alerts with a recorded message.
• To notice when your phone goes silent. If nothing reaches Sakhi from a journey for 30 seconds, your phone warns you; if you do not confirm you are fine within another 30 seconds, we alert your contacts with your last known position, your route so far and the likely reason (for example, a low battery).
• To detect calls for help by voice, if you turn voice detection on (see section 5).
• To connect you with help nearby — verified protectors, safe places to stop, roadside helpers and garages — when you or your contacts ask.
• To verify protectors and listed businesses before anyone is sent to them or they are sent to you.
• To keep a record of an incident, including an alert report you and your contacts can download.
• To respond to you when you contact our support team.
• To keep our Services safe and secure, including rate limits and fraud and abuse prevention.
• To fix and improve our Services, using the diagnostics described above.
• To comply with our legal obligations and respond to lawful requests.

We rely on your consent, which you can withdraw at any time, and, where applicable, on the legitimate uses permitted under Section 7 of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — for example, to respond to a situation that threatens someone’s life or safety, or to comply with the law.

3. When and with whom do we share your personal information?

In short: We share information with the people you choose to alert, with helpers only when you ask for help, and with the service providers who run parts of Sakhi for us. We do not sell your personal information.

People you choose

• Your emergency contacts. Anyone holding your tracking link can see that journey — your live location, route, vehicle details and ride photos — without signing in, so a frightened family member does not need an account. The link is temporary: it stops working when the journey ends, or 24 hours after an alert is resolved if the journey continues. Your audio and video become playable from the link only after an alert is raised. Nobody becomes your contact silently: each person is asked first, and anyone who opts out receives nothing from then on, including during an SOS.
• Verified protectors. During an SOS, if you choose to alert them, or one of your contacts does, verified protectors within 2,000 km receive your live location, your journey and your vehicle through a link that stops working when your alert closes. They never see your recordings, your phone number or your contacts. Your contacts may do this unless you turn it off on your contacts page. If a protector accepts, you and your contacts see their name and number.
• Safe places to stop. A venue you ask sees how far away you are, an arrival code and when you asked — never your name, number or location.
• Roadside helpers and garages. A helper you ask sees your vehicle, the problem and how far away you are; once it accepts, it sees your exact location, your note and your chat messages. A garage you book sees your vehicle, the work and the time slot. Neither receives your name or phone number.
• Your contacts, for requests. Your contacts can follow a request for help through their tracking link.
• The public. Your community review, under the name you typed.
• Our support team sees your support messages with your name and phone number so they can call you back. Each message is also forwarded to the team on WhatsApp.

Our alert test number

A test phone number that we own, shown as “Police (mock)”, receives a copy of every message your contacts receive, including the tracking link, so that our team can check alerts arrive. It is not a police station, and no police are notified.

Police and emergency services

Sakhi does not contact the police or dial 112 on your behalf. It shows you the nearest police station and hospital so that you, or your contacts, can call them. We disclose information to authorities only where the law requires us to.

Service providers

We use the following third-party service providers to operate the Services. They process personal information on our behalf, only for the purposes below:

• Amazon Web Services — hosting our servers and storing recordings and photos, and running our voice-detection service.
• MongoDB Atlas — our database.
• AiSensy and Whapi.Cloud — delivering WhatsApp messages: sign-in codes, contact invitations, journey updates and alerts. These messages travel over WhatsApp, a service of Meta, under WhatsApp’s own terms.
• Plivo — placing automated alert calls to your contacts.
• Google Maps Platform — maps, addresses, nearby places, directions and traffic. Your coordinates are sent to Google to provide these.
• Pusher — delivering live updates to open pages.
• Expo and Google Firebase Cloud Messaging — delivering push notifications to the Android app.
• Sentry and PostHog — crash reports and usage diagnostics in the Android app, as described in section 1.

If you turn on Assistant SOS in the Android app, Google Assistant hears the command and opens Sakhi; Google processes that request under its own privacy policy.

Other situations

• Legal obligations. We may disclose your information where we are legally required to do so, to comply with a court order, law or legal process.
• Business transfers. We may share or transfer your information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or part of our business by another company. This Privacy Notice will continue to apply to your information.

4. Do we use cookies and other tracking technologies?

In short: We use only the cookies needed to keep you signed in and remember your preferences. We have no advertising or analytics cookies.

Our website uses these cookies:

• Sign-in cookies that keep you signed in to your account, or to the protector, venue or helper pages.
• A guest voice-test cookie holding the random secret for your guest history, for up to 400 days.
• A theme cookie remembering whether you chose light or dark mode.

We also store small preferences in your browser, such as whether you have already seen a guided tour. When a map is shown, it loads from Google, which receives your IP address under Google’s privacy policy. Tracking pages are excluded from search engines and send no referrer, so a tracking link is not passed to other sites. Most browsers let you remove or reject cookies; if you reject sign-in cookies, you will not be able to sign in.

5. Do we offer artificial intelligence-based products?

In short: Yes. Sakhi can listen for calls for help and raise an alert on its own, but only when you turn voice detection on.

Voice detection is an automated system that listens for your voice phrase, calls for help and screams, in English and Hindi. While it is on during a journey — or while a request for help you made without a journey stands, if you ask it to listen — audio from your phone is streamed live to our voice-detection service, hosted on Amazon Web Services in India.

When it detects a call for help, Sakhi starts an alert with a short countdown. You can stop it with your safety secret; if you do nothing, your contacts are alerted. Every alert records whether it was raised by a tap or by voice, so false alarms can be measured, and you can mark any alert as a false alarm. Removing your voice phrase, or deleting your account, deletes the saved words both from Sakhi and from the voice-detection service.

6. How long do we keep your information?

In short: We keep your information only as long as needed for the purposes in this notice. Recordings from an uneventful journey are deleted within 60 minutes.

Each location and recording is stored with its own deletion date, and the database removes it on schedule. When we have no ongoing legitimate need to process your personal information, we will delete it, unless the law requires us to keep it longer.

7. How do we keep your information safe?

In short: We aim to protect your personal information through a system of organisational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate and reasonable technical and organisational security measures designed to protect the personal information we process. These include encryption in transit, private encrypted storage for recordings and photos, storing tracking links and safety secrets only as keyed or one-way hashes, removing phone numbers from our logs, rate limits on sensitive actions, and requiring your safety secret to stop an alert or delete your account.

However, despite our safeguards and efforts to secure your information, no electronic transmission over the internet or information storage technology can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, so we cannot promise or guarantee that hackers, cybercriminals, or other unauthorised third parties will not be able to defeat our security and improperly collect, access, steal, or modify your information. You should only access the Services within a secure environment.

8. Do we collect information from minors?

In short: Sakhi is intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect data from children without verifiable consent from a parent or lawful guardian.

Our Services are intended for people aged 18 or older. In line with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, we do not knowingly process the personal data of anyone under 18 without the verifiable consent of their parent or lawful guardian. Protectors must be 18 or older, which is checked during identity verification. If you believe a child has given us personal information without that consent, please contact us using the details in section 13.

9. What are your privacy rights?

In short: You can review, correct and erase your personal information, and withdraw your consent, at any time.

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you have the right to:

• obtain a summary of the personal data we process about you, and the identities of those we have shared it with;
• have inaccurate or incomplete personal data corrected or updated;
• have your personal data erased;
• have a grievance about our processing addressed; and
• nominate another person to exercise these rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity.

Withdrawing your consent. You can switch off audio, video and voice detection before any journey, remove contacts, stop being a protector, or delete your account. If you are someone’s emergency contact, the link in the message you received lets you opt out at any time. Withdrawing consent does not affect the lawfulness of processing carried out before you withdrew it.

To exercise these rights, see section 14 or contact us using the details in section 13.

10. Controls for Do-Not-Track features

Most web browsers and some mobile operating systems and mobile applications include a Do-Not-Track (‘DNT’) feature or setting you can activate to signal your privacy preference not to have data about your online browsing activities monitored and collected. No uniform technology standard for recognising and implementing DNT signals has been finalised, so we do not currently respond to DNT browser signals. Because we use no advertising or cross-site tracking, there is no such tracking for a DNT signal to switch off.

11. Where is your information stored?

In short: We are based in India, and our servers and recordings are hosted in India. Some service providers may process information outside India.

Our servers, recordings and photos, and our voice-detection service, are hosted with Amazon Web Services in the Asia Pacific (Mumbai) region. Our database is hosted with MongoDB Atlas. Some of our service providers — including Google, Meta (WhatsApp), Plivo, Pusher, Expo, Sentry and PostHog — may process personal information outside India, including in the United States and the European Union. We transfer personal data outside India only as permitted under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and rely on our agreements with these providers to protect it in a manner consistent with this Privacy Notice.

12. Do we make updates to this notice?

In short: Yes, we will update this notice as necessary to stay compliant with relevant laws and to reflect changes to Sakhi.

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. The updated version will be indicated by an updated ‘Last updated’ date at the top of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes, we may notify you either by prominently posting a notice of such changes or by sending you a notification directly.

13. How can you contact us about this notice?

If you have questions or comments about this notice, you may email us at team@acadsync.in, call us at +91 73822 49562, or contact us by post at:

14. How can you review, update, or delete the data we collect from you?

You can update your contacts and settings at any time in the app or on the website. To delete your account, open the Sakhi Android app and go to You → Privacy and your data. Deleting your account erases everything listed in this notice, including locations and recordings kept as evidence of an alert, so the app offers you the alert report first. For your protection, deletion needs your safety secret and is not possible while a journey or alert is active.

To delete your account from the website, to request a summary of your data, or to correct something you cannot change yourself, email us at team@acadsync.in, mentioning your registered mobile number, and we will verify that the request is yours before acting on it. Protectors can stop at any time from the protector page, which deletes their record. Venues and helpers can ask us to remove their listing.

15. Grievance Officer (DPDP Act, 2023)

In accordance with the Information Technology Act, 2000, the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 of India, the contact details of our Grievance Officer are provided below:

We will acknowledge your grievance within twenty-four (24) hours of receipt and endeavour to resolve it within thirty (30) days. Where rules notified under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 prescribe shorter or stricter timelines, we will follow those. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may approach the Data Protection Board of India under that Act.