Bharat101 Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

Bharat101 is an independent, privately-run safety app developed by Shivay Fire & Life Safety (India) Pvt. Ltd. ("Shivay", "we", "us"). It is not a government service and is not operated by or affiliated with any government body or fire department. For official emergency help, call 112 or 101.

Bharat101 ("the app") is an emergency-reporting and personal-safety app. This policy explains what information the app collects, why, who it is shared with, how long it is kept, and how you can delete it.

Bharat101 is a personal-safety tool, not a general-purpose app — some of the data below (especially location) is collected because the features that make the app useful in an emergency don't work without it.

Information we collect

Location	Collected when you report an emergency, trigger an SOS, or share your location with a family or community circle. For an active SOS and for circles you've turned sharing on for, this can continue in the background after you close the app — that's what lets responders or your circle see where you are without keeping the app open. Circle location sharing is off by default and only turns on when you switch it on for a specific circle. If your location hasn't updated in a while, we may ask your phone in the background for one fresh location fix (this can happen automatically when a member of that circle opens it, and at most a few times an hour) — this only applies to circles you've chosen to share with. Each circle location point also includes your speed, whether you appear to be moving (and, where your phone can tell, whether you are still, walking or in a vehicle) and your phone's battery level (and whether it is charging). The movement information is stored with the position and is not shown to anyone or shared. Your battery level is shown to the people you share a circle with, next to your name, only while you are sharing with that circle and never from before you switched sharing on. Your "safe / need help" check-in status is visible to your circles. We also read your location once when you create your account, and when you post a help request, lost-and-found item or local alert or tap "update home location", to work out your home city and state; these are stored on your account and shown on your Community profile unless you hide them. Local alerts and help requests carry an approximate location (about 1 km) that other signed-in users can see. The most recent position we received stays on your account until you delete it. While the nearby-emergency alert is switched on in your notification settings, that position is also used to decide whether to alert you about an incident reported near it. To show local weather, air quality, news and place names, the app sends your position to our servers, which pass an approximate version (about 1 km) to a weather service and use OpenStreetMap's place-name service.
Location record kept for safety	Separately from the 30-day history your circle can see, every location point the app sends us during an SOS or circle sharing is also stored in an access-restricted record for up to 12 months, even if you later switch sharing off. Only authorised administrators of the service can see it, for safety, security and legal purposes. It is deleted when your account is deleted.
Name & phone number	Used to identify who is reporting an emergency or who a circle member is, and as your login/account identifier. Members of circles you join can see your name, photo and phone number. Your name and photo are shown on your Community posts and replies.
Email address	Required at sign-up and to reset your password — used to send one-time verification codes, and security notices about unusual sign-in attempts, through our email provider, Resend, so we know the account belongs to a real, reachable person. Kept on your account.
Emergency contacts	The names and phone numbers you type in as emergency contacts, and numbers you block. We do not read your phone's contact list; the picker gives us only the one contact you choose. If a contact also uses Bharat101, they receive an in-app alert showing your name, phone number and location when you start an SOS.
Photos	Your profile picture is stored in our database and can be seen by other Bharat101 users wherever your name appears (circles, Community, leaderboards). Photos you attach to circle chat messages, Community posts or local alerts are stored in private storage and are only shown to the people who can see that message or post.
Messages & posts	Circle chat messages (visible to that circle's members) and Community posts, replies, polls and reactions (visible to other signed-in Bharat101 users). A report you make about a post is visible only to moderators. Circle chat is not end-to-end encrypted.
Assistant questions	Questions you type into the safety assistants are saved with your account. The HowToSurvive assistant sends the text of your question to Google's Gemini AI service to generate the answer — please do not include names, phone numbers, addresses or health details in your questions. A copy of each question's wording, linked to a random session code and not to your account, is also kept to improve the assistant.
Device & network	A push notification token issued by Firebase Cloud Messaging and a random per-installation code that ties notifications to your device; your app version and device type; and your IP address. Your most recent IP address is kept on your account. Our servers keep access and application logs (time, IP address, the page or action requested), and security logs record sign-in and account events and blocked or suspicious requests together with the IP address and device type.
Activity & progress	Quiz answers, badges, rank and points, the days you were active, articles you opened (used to award points) and your Community activity. Anonymous news-feed interactions are counted against a random session code, not your account.
Home district, social links	Optional details you type in — the home district and state used for severe-weather alerts, and social-media links — are stored on your account. Social links are shown on your Community profile only if you switch that on.
Safety records	If you use the Safety tab: the safety devices, NOC records and premises or alarm gateways you register, and the alarm events they report.
Biometric login	If you turn on fingerprint/face login, your phone's own operating system handles the biometric match — Bharat101 never receives, stores, or transmits your fingerprint or face data. If you use "Remember me" or biometric login, your sign-in details stay on your phone (in its secure storage, on the latest version of the app).

We do not use advertising identifiers or third-party advertising or analytics tools, and we do not sell your data.

How we use this information

To route and respond to emergency reports and SOS alerts
To let a family/community circle you've joined see your shared location
To show your name/phone/photo to responders and circle members so they know who they're dealing with
To send you push notifications about alerts, invites, nearby incidents and hazards, reminders about location sharing, your weekly Community summary, and app updates
To show local weather, news and nearby services, and to answer your questions in the safety assistants
To award points, badges and rank for safety learning and Community activity
To operate your account and sign-in, and to keep the service secure: detecting abuse, investigating incidents and meeting legal obligations

Who we share it with

Control-room operators, administrators and response staff who use the Bharat101 dashboard and companion apps, for calls and SOS you report or trigger. Administrators can also view and export account details and the last position we stored.
Members of a circle you've joined, for the location, name, photo and phone number you've chosen to share with that circle
Other signed-in Bharat101 users, for the posts, replies and reactions you make in Community, and for your Community profile (name, photo, home city, safety rank, badges, Community statistics and, if you choose, social links) and the leaderboards. You can hide most of these in your Community profile settings.
People near you: when you earn a safety badge, signed-in users within about 10 km of your last known position may get a notification showing your name and home city, unless you have hidden your city or badges
A person whose help request you offer to help with: once they approve you, they can see your phone number
The control room and the station assigned to a mock-drill request you submit (building, contact number, address)
Anyone you send an SOS link to. When you start an SOS the app prepares a text message containing a tracking link, which you send from your own messaging app. Anyone who opens that link, with no Bharat101 account or login, can see your name, your live location and your route on a map while the SOS is active and for 24 hours after it ends.
Your emergency contacts who use Bharat101, who get an in-app alert with your name, phone number and location

Service providers that process data for us:

Amazon Web Services — our servers and main database (India, Mumbai region). Other providers listed here may process data outside India.
Supabase — private storage for the photos you attach to messages and posts
Backblaze — off-site backups of our database, and a small per-person file holding your name, phone number, email, city, profile photo, rank and badges
Firebase Cloud Messaging (Google) — delivers push notifications; the notification content, including the sender's name, phone number and location for SOS alerts, passes through Google
Resend — sends the email verification codes and security notices
Google (Gemini AI) — receives the text of your question when you use the HowToSurvive assistant, and handles it under its Gemini API terms
Groq — also receives the text of your question when you use the HowToSurvive assistant (it often answers first because it is faster), and handles it under its API terms. A question may go to Groq, to Google, or to both, because if one is slow to answer the other is asked at the same time. Public news headlines are also sent to Groq to write short summaries.
Google News — the name of your city and state (not your coordinates) is used to search for local safety news
Google Translate — public news and article text (never your own messages, questions or posts) is sent to translate it into Hindi or Gujarati
OpenStreetMap and related map services — map tiles and place-name lookups (OpenStreetMap), nearby-place lookups (Overpass API) and road routing for SOS routes (Project OSRM). Coordinates are sent to them when needed, and your IP address reaches the tile servers whenever a map loads, as in any app showing a map.
OpenWeatherMap — an approximate position (about 1 km) to fetch local weather
Open-Meteo — an approximate position (about 1 km) to fetch the local air quality (AQI)
ipwho.is — your IP address, to estimate an approximate location. Only used for a circle member who is sharing with a circle but whose phone has given us no real location since sharing began (for example, device location turned off entirely), and only until a real fix arrives; always shown to the circle clearly labelled "Approximate location"
Google Fonts and jsDelivr — your phone's IP address reaches them when the app loads its fonts or a notification picture

We do not sell your data, and we do not share it with advertisers.

How long we keep it

Location history visible to your circles, and SOS location trails: the last 30 days
The access-restricted location record described above: up to 12 months
Circle chat messages: 30 days
Community chat posts: 30 days. Local alerts, help requests and questions: 7 days. Polls and lost-and-found posts: until your account is deleted. When you delete a post yourself it is hidden from other people straight away, but its text can remain in our records until the periods above end or your account is deleted.
HowToSurvive assistant chat linked to your account: 7 days. The basic assistant's chat history: until you delete your account (the app shows only the last 24 hours). The session-code copy of question wording described above is not linked to you.
Server access and application logs: about 90 days. Security logs (sign-in and account events, with IP address and device type): at least 180 days, and for as long as needed to investigate security incidents or meet legal obligations
Emergency reports you make: kept as incident records (see what is kept)
Your account, contacts, circles, photos, progress and safety records: until you delete your account
Routine backups: for a limited period, after which they are overwritten. Data you delete disappears from backups as they expire

Deleting your account and data

You can delete your account at any time in the app (Profile › Account Details › Delete Account), or follow the steps at bharat101 account deletion (https://app.shivays.com/account-deletion). In the app, your account is permanently deleted 30 days after you ask unless you sign back in. If you no longer have the app, email info@shivays.com; we verify that the request is from you and delete the account within 30 days. The deletion page lists what is deleted and what is kept.

Your choices

Location sharing is off until you switch it on, per circle. One master switch (Profile › Privacy & location sharing) stops sharing with every circle and stops the app using your location in the background and for weather, news and nearby-service sorting. It does not stop SOS, or the location you attach to an emergency report or a Community post, because you start those yourself; the last position already stored stays on your account until you delete it.
You can switch the nearby-emergency alert, and other notification types, off in the app's notification settings
You can hide your city, badges, Community statistics and safety rank in your Community profile settings
You can ask us to correct or delete your data at any time at info@shivays.com

Security

Data is transmitted over encrypted (HTTPS) connections. We take reasonable measures to protect your information, but no system is 100% secure.

Children's privacy

Bharat101 is intended for adults (18 and over). It is not directed at children under 18, and we do not knowingly collect data from them.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the app changes. Material changes will be reflected here with an updated "Last updated" date.

Questions about this policy, privacy requests or complaints, or to request data deletion:
info@shivays.com