Startup India Hub is committed to protecting any personal information that we may receive while you access our website and mobile application. We believe it is important for you to know how we treat information about you that we may receive when you engage with us. This Privacy Policy is devised to help you feel more confident about the privacy and security of your personal details. 'You' shall mean you, the user of the website or application, and ‘Yourself’ interpreted accordingly. 'We' / 'Us' means Startup India, and 'Our' is interpreted accordingly. 'Users' means the users of the website or application collectively and/or individually, as the context allows.

The website/mobile application is intended for all persons who are interested in learning about entrepreneurship and the Indian startup ecosystem and seek opportunities and knowledge related to entrepreneurship. The website/mobile application includes all microsites under the startupindia.gov.in domain, like seedfund.startupindia.gov.in, maarg.startupindia.gov.in, etc.

Start-up India websites/applications/microsites and any other related links do not automatically capture any specific personal information from you (like name, phone number, or e-mail address) that allows us to identify you individually. If the Portal requests you to provide personal information, you will be informed of the particular purposes for which the information is gathered, and adequate security measures will be taken to protect your personal information. We receive information that a) You directly provide to Us, such as personal information You provide when You visit the Website/mobile application; b) information/files/documents/data that you share with other users on the Website/mobile application; and c) information that is passively or automatically collected from You, such as information collected from the browser or device You used to access Our Website or Services. In this Privacy Policy, we refer to all this as the ‘User Information’. To explain further,

• Information You Provide To Us. There are portions of this website or application where we may need to collect personal information from you for a specific purpose. For example, you can register, apply for partner services, and seek out enabler connections. In the course of these various offerings, we often seek to collect from you various forms of information, such as name, address, e-mail address, telephone number, fax number, and business details. In some instances, you may also be able to submit information about your business plan. For example, you might submit answers specific to your business or idea for an innovation challenge or hunt posted on the portal.
• Information that is automatically collected. In general, you can visit this website without telling us who you are or revealing any information about yourself. We, and our third-party service providers or other partners (collectively ‘Partners’) may use automated means to collect various types of information about you, your computer, or other device used to access our website. A representative, non-exhaustive list of the types of automatically collected information may include: network or Internet protocol address and type of browser You are using (e.g., Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer), the type of operating system You are using (e.g., Microsoft Windows or Mac OS), mobile network, device identifiers, device settings, browser settings, the web pages of the Website You have visited, Website visited before and after You visited our Website, the type of handheld or mobile device used to view the Website (e.g., iOS, Android), location information, and the content and advertisements You have accessed, seen, forwarded, and/or clicked on. Please see our Section titled Cookies for more information about how the foregoing information may be collected and used.
  
  We do not automatically capture any specific personal information from you (like name, phone number, or e-mail address) that allows us to identify you individually. If the portal requests you to provide personal information, you will be informed of the particular purposes for which the information is gathered, and adequate security measures will be taken to protect your personal information.
  
  We gather certain information about the user, such as Internet protocol (IP) addresses, domain name, browser type, operating system, the date and time of the visit, and the pages visited. We make no attempt to link these addresses with the identities of individuals visiting our site unless an attempt to damage the site has been detected.
• Information that You Share with Other Users on the Website/Mobile Application: Our website allows viewing and sharing information, including through blogs, ratings, comments, messages, chat, etc. You should consider who you choose to share with and what you share, because people who can see your activity through our website can choose to share it with others on and off our website, including people and businesses outside the audience that you shared with. For example, when you send a message to a specific startup or an enabler, they can download, screenshot, or reshare that content with others across or off our website, in person or through an online medium. Also, when you comment on someone else's content and/or react to their content, your comment and/or reaction will be visible to anyone who can see the other person's content, and that person will be able to change the audience later. We are not responsible for any information or data, personal and/or commercial, shared by you with any other user or third-party on the website or mobile application. Users are advised not to use the website for any financial transaction for third parties and restrict the use to non

By entering Your User Information, you accept that We may retain Your User Information and that it may be held by Us or any Partners that process it on Our behalf. Further, you also accept that your user information shall also be used by the program hosts with regards to the specific challenges, workshops, events, and programs posted on the Startup India Portal. We, along with incubators, accelerators, and mentors, shall be entitled to use your user information for the following purposes:

• Provide and communicate with you about feedback, follow up on programs you’ve applied for, or queries submitted to the team.

• Fulfil your requests regarding the services, including, without limitation, responding to your enquiries and communicating with you about our products or services that we believe may be of interest to you.

• Enforce the legal terms (including without limitation our policies and terms of service) that govern your use of our services and/or for the purposes for which you provided the information.

• Provide technical support for the website or in connection with our services and offerings.

• Prevent fraud or potentially illegal activities (including, without limitation, copyright infringement) on or through our website or services.

• Protect the safety of our other subscribers or users,

• Perform analysis regarding how you use the services or any part thereof, such as market research, including statistical analysis of user behaviour, which we may disclose to third parties in depersonalised, aggregated form.

• In order to enable us to comply with any requirements imposed on us by law.

• In order to send you periodic communications (this may include e-mail) about features, products and services, events, and special offers. Such communications from us may include promotion of programs being organised by third parties on our website.

• Evaluation of Programs and Challenges hosted on Startup India Portal and provide any support required by you.

You should be aware that information and data may be automatically collected through the use of cookies, web beacons, or similar tracking technologies. "Cookies" are text files placed in your computer browser that store basic information that a website can use to recognise repeat site visits and, as an example, recall your name if this has been previously supplied. We may use this to understand your service and internet usage, observe behaviour, and compile aggregate data in order to improve or customise our products, service offerings, or the website, target the advertising, and assess the general effectiveness of such advertising. Cookies do not attach to your system and damage your files. If you do not want information collected through the use of cookies, there is a simple procedure in most browsers that allows you to deny or accept the cookie feature. Note, however, that "personalised" services may be affected if the cookie option is disabled.

For example, we may use cookies to personalise your experience at our services (e.g., to recognise you by name when you return to our website) and save your password in password-protected areas. We also may use cookies or other tracking technologies to help us offer you products, offerings, or services that may be of interest to you when you visit this website. We or a third-party platform with whom we work may place or recognise a unique cookie on your browser to enable you to receive customised offers and services on this website. These cookies contain no information intended to identify you personally. The cookies may be associated with de-identified demographic or other data linked to or derived from data you voluntarily have submitted to us (e.g., your email address) that we may share with a service provider solely in hashed, non-human-readable form.

We and our Partners may also use "web beacons," or clear GIFs, or similar technologies, which are small pieces of code placed on our website or in an email, to monitor the behaviour and collect data about the visitors viewing our website or email. For example, web beacons may be used to count the users who visit a web page or to deliver a cookie to the browser of a visitor viewing that website. Web beacons may also be used to provide information on the effectiveness of our email campaigns (e.g., open rates, clicks, forwards, etc.).

Security is very important to us. All security procedures are in place to protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your user information. We maintain strict physical, electronic, and administrative safeguards to protect your user information, including your personal information, from unauthorised or inappropriate access.

We follow generally accepted standards to collect, store and protect personal data, including the use of encryption. We retain personal data for as long as it is needed to provide the services you have requested and thereafter for legal and service purposes. These may include retention periods mandated by legal, contractual, or similar obligations; for resolving, preserving, enforcing, or defending our legal and contractual rights; needed to maintain adequate and accurate business and financial records; or how you access, update, or delete your data, etc.

This website will take all reasonable efforts to ensure the confidentiality of personal data, uploaded information, etc. and will take reasonable efforts to ensure that the information received from you is not misused. This website also reveals personal data/information uploaded by you in connection with any lawful process. While this website will take the above reasonable measures to guard against misuse of personal data/information submitted to it by you, this website cannot guarantee that someone will not overcome our security measures, including, without limitation, the security measures implemented on this Web site. Therefore, your posting of personal data/information on this Web site constitutes your acceptance of this risk, and by posting of personal data/information, you waive any right to seek legal relief from this website due to any misuse of your information.

We shall not be responsible for any illicit, immoral, illegal, and/or malicious content exchanged between one or more users, and the knowledge of the same shall give the website/mobile application administrator the right to block and report such a user.

The website administrator and managers shall not be responsible for any information or content being disseminated through live streaming or broadcasting on the website by a third party. In the event a user finds such content to be illegal, immoral, illicit, immoral, and/or incorrect by nature of determined facts, such user may inform the website administrator to report the content.

We do not sell or share any personally identifiable information volunteered on the Portal Website with any third party (public or private). Generally accepted best practices shall be user to protect any information provided to this website to protect from loss, misuse, unauthorised access or disclosure, alteration, or destruction. We may disclose the user information as follows:

• To service providers or partners that we have engaged to perform business-related functions on our behalf. This may include service providers that:
  (a) conduct research and analytics.
  (b) create content.
  (c) provide customer, technical, or operational support.
  (d) conduct or support marketing (such as email or advertising platforms).
  (e) fulfil orders and user requests. 
  (g) host our services, forums, and online communities.
  (h) administer the website.
  (i) maintain databases.
  (j) otherwise support our services.
• Any answers submitted by you for a specific program or innovation challenge will be shared with the partners who are a part of that specific innovation hunt.
• In response to legal process, for example, in response to a court order or a subpoena, a law enforcement or government agency's request or similar request.
• With third parties in order to investigate, prevent, or take action (in our sole discretion) regarding potentially illegal activities, suspected fraud, situations involving potential threats to any person, us, or the Website, or violations of our policies, the law, or our Terms of Use, to verify or enforce compliance with the policies governing our Website.
• We may share the user information with our affiliates or group companies so they can provide, improve, and communicate with you about their own or their marketing partners’ products and services.
• We reserve the right to disclose and transfer the user information outside India. We will comply with all relevant data protection legislation in relation to the period for which we retain any user information.

Our website may contain links to or integrations with other services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other media services and platforms whose information practices may be different than ours. Visitors should consult these other services' privacy notices, as we have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by these third parties.

Acceptance of the Policy:

By visiting our website, signing up or logging into the website, or uploading information on our website, you acknowledge and unconditionally accept the policy. If you do not agree with this policy, do not use our website and services or provide here any of your personal data.

This privacy policy is governed by and operated in accordance with the laws of India. If any of the parties wish to seek legal recourse, they may do so by using the courts of law in New Delhi.

We may change this privacy policy from time to time, and you should check these regularly. Your use of the website will be deemed an acceptance of the privacy policy existing at that time.