Privacy Policy

Last updated: 13 July 2026

MeraChannel is built to be near-anonymous. Other users only ever see your first name and your subscriber level — never your phone number, never your contacts, never who you subscribe to. This policy explains what we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what you can ask us to do with it. MeraChannel is operated by Locus Web Services Private Limited (CIN U72200TG2010PTC071197), #202, Kamala Aurum, Plot 9, Road No 70, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad – 500110, which is the data fiduciary for your personal data under India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

1. What we collect

You give us

• Mobile number — to create your account and sign you in via OTP. Required.
• First name and, optionally, a profile picture — shown to other users.
• Content you post — channel posts, stories, comments, likes, and any images or video in them.
• Creator payout details — if you run a channel: bank account, IFSC, and tax details such as PAN, needed to pay you.

The app asks for access to your camera and photos and videos only when you choose to post content or set a profile picture, and only uses what you pick. It does not ask for your contacts, your location, or your SMS.

Created when you use the app

• Coin and transaction records — plan purchases, coins credited, coins spent, coins earned from referrals, and which channels you subscribed to. We keep these because they are financial records.
• Engagement — what you liked or commented on, and your subscriber level.
• Hearts — the running total of hearts received, and your username, which forms your invite link.
• Device and log data — device model, OS version, app version, IP address, crash logs, and timestamps. Used to keep the service running, secure, and debuggable.
• Install attribution — via the Google Play Install Referrer API, so we can credit the invite link you arrived through and pay the referral reward.

Payment information

Payments run on UPI Autopay through Cashfree Payments. Your UPI PIN, bank credentials, and card details are entered in your bank or UPI app and go to Cashfree — we never see or store them. We store only what we need to reconcile your account: the plan, the amount, the status, and Cashfree’s reference IDs.

Hearts and your invite link

2. Why we use it

We process your data on the basis of your consent (given when you sign up and when you grant permissions), because it is necessary to provide the service you asked for, and where we must to comply with the law. You can withdraw consent at any time — see section 6.

We do not sell your personal data. We do not use your data for third-party advertising, and we do not share your phone number with advertisers or data brokers.

3. What other people can see

Inside the app, other users can see only:

• your first name;
• your subscriber level; and
• content you post publicly — posts, stories, comments, and likes.

If you share your Hearts invite link, anyone who opens it — with or without an account — additionally sees your first name, profile picture, and total hearts received on your public page. That page exists only because you chose to share the link.

Nobody can see your phone number, your coin balance, your transactions, the list of channels you subscribe to, who sent you hearts, or who you sent hearts to. There are no direct messages and no user-to-user follows.

4. Who we share it with

We share personal data only with service providers who need it to run MeraChannel, and only for that purpose:

• Cashfree Payments — to process UPI Autopay charges and creator payouts.
• Hosting and infrastructure providers — to run our servers and databases.
• Media storage and delivery providers — to store and serve images and video.
• SMS providers — to deliver your OTP.
• Analytics and crash reporting — in aggregated or pseudonymous form, to understand usage and fix crashes.
• Professional advisers — auditors, accountants, and lawyers, where needed.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it — a valid court order, a lawful request from a government agency, or to establish or defend a legal claim — and to protect the safety of our users. If MeraChannel is involved in a merger or acquisition, data may transfer to the successor entity, which will remain bound by this policy.

5. Where it lives, and for how long

Data is stored on servers operated on our behalf, which may be located outside India. Where data is transferred outside India, we do so in line with applicable Indian law and require the recipient to protect it to the standard set out here.

We keep data only as long as we need it:

• Account data — while your account is open.
• Content — until you delete it, or your account is deleted. Stories expire automatically 24 hours after posting.
• Payment, payout, and tax records — for as long as Indian tax and company law requires (currently up to 8 years), even after you delete your account.
• Logs — typically a short rolling window, for security and debugging.
• Backups — deleted data may persist in encrypted backups for a limited period before being overwritten.

6. Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 you can ask us to:

• Access a summary of the personal data we hold about you and who we shared it with.
• Correct data that is wrong, or complete data that is incomplete. Your name and picture can be edited in the app at any time.
• Erase your data — see “Deleting your account” below.
• Withdraw consent — for example by revoking an app permission (such as camera or photos) in your phone settings, or by deleting your account. Withdrawing consent does not undo processing already carried out lawfully.
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapacitated.
• Complain — to our Grievance Officer below, and then to the Data Protection Board of India if you are not satisfied.

Write to supportmerachannel.com to exercise any of these. We may need to verify your identity — normally by confirming control of your registered mobile number.

7. Deleting your account

You can delete your account from Settings → Delete account in the app. Deletion cancels your plan for the future, ends your channel subscriptions, and forfeits any unspent coins — coins are not refunded (see the Refund Policy). We erase your personal data, other than the payment and tax records we are legally required to keep, which are retained in a restricted form and not used to identify you in the app.

8. Security

Traffic is encrypted in transit (TLS). Authentication tokens are held in encrypted storage on your device. Access to production data is restricted to staff who need it. Phone numbers used for Hearts are stored only as irreversible hashes. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach affects your personal data we will notify you and the Data Protection Board as the law requires.

9. Children

MeraChannel is for users aged 18 and over. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If we learn that an account belongs to a minor, we will close it and delete the data. If you believe a child has given us data, write to supportmerachannel.com.

10. Website

merachannel.com is a simple marketing site. It does not use advertising or tracking cookies. Our hosting provider keeps standard server logs (including IP address) for security and reliability.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If a change is material we will notify you in the app or by other reasonable means before it takes effect. The “Last updated” date above always reflects the current version.

12. Contact and Grievance Officer