Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Rent Drive is a paying-guest, hostel and co-living management service operated by Cloud Drive Technologies Private Limited ("Cloud Drive", "we", "us"), a company registered in India with its office at D.No. 104, Chokkalapuram Pallapatty, Lingamanaickenpatti, Karur, Tamil Nadu 639207.

This policy is an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules, 2011. It is also written to meet the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the rules made under it, as and when their provisions come into force. It does not need a physical or digital signature.

By creating an account, using the Rent Drive apps, or using this website, you agree to this policy. If you do not agree, please do not use the service.

2. Owners, tenants and our role

Rent Drive serves two kinds of people, and our role is different for each.

• Owners and staff. The PG owner, manager or staff member who signs up and runs a property in Rent Drive. For your own account data, Cloud Drive decides how it is processed and is the data fiduciary (controller).
• Tenants. People who stay in a property managed through Rent Drive. The owner enters your details into Rent Drive to run their property and to meet their own legal duties, such as keeping tenant records and ID proof for the local police. For this data the owner is the data fiduciary, and Cloud Drive processes it on the owner's instructions as a data processor.

When a tenant signs in to the tenant app with their mobile number, pays online, or receives notifications, Cloud Drive processes that activity data as a data fiduciary for the limited purpose of providing the tenant app.

3. What we collect

We collect only what is needed to run a PG. We do not collect data about health, religion, caste, sexual orientation or political opinions, and we never ask for it.

Aadhaar: Rent Drive does not perform Aadhaar e-KYC and does not connect to UIDAI. If an owner chooses to store a copy of a tenant's Aadhaar card as ID proof, it is stored as an uploaded document that only that owner's account can see. Owners are responsible for following the Aadhaar Act, 2016 and should mask the first eight digits where possible.

4. How we use it

• To provide the service: set up properties, check tenants in and out, raise dues, record collections and expenses, keep balances, and produce reports and receipts.
• To sign you in and keep your account safe: send OTPs by SMS, alert you to sign-ins from a new device, and keep the sign-in and audit history your account shows you.
• To send service messages: due reminders, payment receipts, and announcements the owner sends to tenants, by push notification and, where enabled, SMS or WhatsApp.
• To process online payments and settle them to the owner's bank account (see section 5).
• To support you, answer demo requests, and tell owners about changes to Rent Drive. We do not send marketing messages to tenants.
• To meet legal duties, such as tax records, and to respond to lawful requests from courts and government authorities.
• To find and fix problems, using crash reports and usage counts that are not tied to a tenant's identity.

We do not sell personal data. We do not show advertising in Rent Drive and we do not share personal data with advertisers.

5. Online payments

Online payments in the tenant app are processed by Razorpay Software Private Limited, a payment aggregator regulated by the Reserve Bank of India. When a tenant pays online:

• Card, UPI and net-banking details are entered on Razorpay's secure payment page and are handled under Razorpay's privacy policy. Rent Drive never receives or stores card numbers, CVV, or UPI PINs.
• Rent Drive stores the payment reference, amount, date, status, and the tenant and due it was paid against, so that the receipt and the owner's day book are correct.
• The amount is settled to the owner's bank account through a Razorpay linked account that Cloud Drive sets up for the owner. The owner's bank and KYC details are shared with Razorpay for this purpose only.
• The gateway fee and the tax on it are shown to the tenant before paying and are added to the amount the tenant pays.

6. Who we share it with

We share personal data only with the service providers below, only to the extent they need it, and under contracts that stop them from using it for anything else.

Within a Rent Drive account, data is visible to the owner and to staff members the owner has given permission, limited to the properties they manage. We also disclose data when the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of users, or to a buyer or successor if Cloud Drive is sold or merged, in which case this policy continues to apply.

Personal data is stored in data centres located in India. Where a provider above processes data outside India, we rely on their contractual commitments and the safeguards the law allows.

7. App permissions

• Contacts (owner app, optional): used only when you tap "Add from contacts" to pick one tenant. Only the contact you choose is read. Your address book is never uploaded.
• Camera and photos (optional): to take or attach a tenant photo, ID proof, agreement, or an expense bill.
• Notifications: to deliver reminders, receipts and announcements.
• Phone (optional): to call a tenant or owner from their record. The call is made by your phone's dialler; we do not record calls or read call logs.

Rent Drive does not read your SMS messages, does not track your location, and does not access files other than those you choose to attach.

8. How long we keep it

• Owner account and property data: for as long as the account is active, and for 90 days after the owner closes it, so that it can be restored if closed by mistake.
• Tenant records: for as long as the owner keeps them. Owners can delete a tenant's documents at any time, and checked-out tenants can be removed by the owner. When an owner closes their account, their tenant records are deleted with it.
• Money records, receipts and invoices: eight years from the end of the financial year they belong to, as Indian tax and company law requires, in a form that no longer identifies the tenant where that is possible.
• Sign-in and audit logs: twelve months.
• Demo and support requests: until the request is closed and for up to two years after, so that we can follow up.

We may keep data longer where a law, court order, or an ongoing dispute requires it. Backups are deleted on a rolling basis within 35 days.

9. How we protect it

• All traffic between the apps, this website and our servers is encrypted with TLS. The database and uploaded documents are encrypted at rest.
• Sign-in is by mobile number and one-time password, with an alert when a new device is used. Sessions use short-lived tokens.
• Each staff member sees only what the owner has permitted, down to individual actions and properties. Every change is logged with who made it and when.
• Documents are served through time-limited links and are never public.
• Access to production systems is limited to named Cloud Drive engineers with multi-factor authentication.

No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects your personal data, we will inform the affected owners, and the Data Protection Board of India where required, without undue delay, and tell you what happened and what we are doing about it.

10. Your rights and choices

You can ask us to:

• tell you what personal data we hold about you and give you a copy;
• correct data that is wrong or incomplete;
• delete data that is no longer needed for the purpose it was collected;
• withdraw consent you gave earlier, for example for promotional messages, without affecting processing done before;
• nominate a person who may exercise these rights for you if you are unable to.

Owners and staff can see and edit their own details under Setting in the app. Tenants can see their details, dues and receipts in the tenant app and should ask their owner to correct anything that is wrong. For anything else, write to the Grievance Officer in section 15. We will reply within 30 days. We may ask you to verify your identity first, and we will tell you if the law requires us to keep something you asked us to delete.

Tenants: because the owner decides what tenant data is kept, a request to delete your tenant record goes to the owner. If the owner does not respond within a reasonable time, contact us and we will take it up with them.

11. Deleting your account

• Owners: go to Setting, then Account, then Delete account, or email us from your registered email address. Deletion removes your account, your properties and all tenant records in them after the 90-day restore window, except money records we must keep by law (section 8).
• Staff: ask your owner to deactivate your login. Your sign-in and audit entries remain in the owner's account for the periods in section 8.
• Tenants: you can stop using the tenant app at any time. To remove your record, ask your owner. Your payment receipts stay in the owner's books for the legal retention period.

12. Children

Rent Drive accounts are for adults. We do not knowingly create accounts for anyone under 18. An owner may record a tenant under 18, for example a student, only with the verifiable consent of a parent or guardian, whose details should be entered as the emergency contact. Such tenants are not sent promotional messages.

13. Cookies and this website

rentdrive.in sets no cookies and uses no analytics or advertising trackers. Fonts are loaded from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address to serve them. The demo-request form is delivered by Web3Forms (section 6). The Rent Drive web apps store a sign-in token and your preferences in your browser's local storage so that you stay signed in; clearing your browser data signs you out.

This site links to other websites, such as Razorpay. Their privacy policies apply there, not this one.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy when the service or the law changes. The effective date at the top shows the current version. For a change that reduces your rights or adds a new use of personal data, we will notify owners in the app and by email at least 15 days before it takes effect, and owners should pass the notice to their tenants.

15. Grievance Officer and contact

Under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you can raise any concern about this policy or your personal data with our Grievance Officer. We acknowledge complaints within 48 hours and resolve them within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may approach the Data Protection Board of India once it is constituted and accepting complaints, or any other authority the law provides.