Pogalaame

Last updated 25 October 2026

Privacy notice

Pogalaame helps students at Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli share autos and taxis to and from Trichy city. This notice explains what we collect, and why.

What we collect

Sign-in codes are stored only in scrambled form and expire after 10 minutes.

When you book a ride

We record your pick-up and drop-off points, when you want to leave, how many seats you need and your share of the fare. Co-riders in the same vehicle see your first name, your college, your stops and your share, never your email. Your driver sees the same and, once they accept, your mobile number if you added one, so they can call you at the pick-up.

Pools where riders arrange the driver. While Pogalaame has few drivers, rides may be pools whose riders call a driver they know. To join one you need your name, gender (“Prefer not to say” is fine) and mobile number on your account, so your pool knows who’s coming and can reach you. Others in your pool see what co-riders always see, and your mobile number only if you choose to share it with them (you can stop at any time). If someone in the pool notes the driver they called, everyone in the pool sees that driver’s name, number and vehicle; we store them (the number encrypted) and delete them a week after the ride.

Gender is only used for women-only rides. You declare it yourself; the Pogalaame team may check it and can remove someone from women-only rides. It isn’t shown to co-riders or drivers, though a women-only ride is labelled as one.

Location

SOS

If you press SOS during a ride, we make a secret link showing your first name, college, ride, driver and, if your phone allows it, your live location while your ride page is open. Anyone you send the link to can see it; you choose who, and it’s sent from your own phone. It stops working after 6 hours or when you tap I’m safe now. The Pogalaame team is alerted with your name and phone number so we can help. The location is deleted after 7 days; we keep a record that an SOS happened.

Ride chat

Each ride has a chat for its riders and driver, so nobody needs to share a phone number. We store the messages, who sent them and when. Only people on that ride see them, by first name, and the Pogalaame team can read them to keep rides safe. You can report a message to us. Messages are deleted 7 days after they’re sent, or after 90 days if one was reported or someone pressed SOS on that ride. Deleting your account deletes your messages too.

Ratings and blocks

After a ride, riders and drivers can rate each other. Riders see a driver’s average once they have at least 3 ratings; comments are seen only by the Pogalaame team. You can block a student by their college email, or a driver you’ve ridden with, and you won’t share a ride with them. Nobody is told they were blocked. A blocked email is stored as a keyed hash and in encrypted form.

Invite links

You can share your own invite link with friends. Anyone who opens it sees your first name and college. Opening it leaves a cookie for 30 days; if they sign up for the first time in that time, we record that you invited them. You see how many friends joined and how many have taken a ride, not who they are; the Pogalaame team can see who invited whom. You can make a new link at any time, and the old one stops working.

You can also send an auto or taxi driver you know a link to apply to drive. It shows them your first name. You see how many drivers applied with it and how many were approved, not who they are, and we let you know when one is approved.

While we run a referral contest, students who bring friends appear on a leaderboard that signed-in students can see, with their first name, college and how many friends they brought. You can hide your name there, and show as “A student”. To pay the winners, the Pogalaame team looks at who they invited and contacts them by email or phone, and pays by UPI.

Notifications

If you turn on notifications, we store your browser’s push address. Ride updates are encrypted on our side and delivered by your browser’s push service (Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft), which can’t read them. We also email important updates, such as a driver confirming your ride; you can turn emails off on your account page. Now and then we may email students news about Pogalaame, such as a referral contest; each of those has an unsubscribe link.

If you drive with Pogalaame

When we add you as a driver, or you apply with someone’s link, we record your name, mobile number, UPI ID, vehicle type and registration number, who invited you, the last 4 characters of your licence number, and when your licence and permit expire. Before you can accept rides you upload photos or PDFs of both sides of your driving licence and your vehicle’s RC; only the Pogalaame team can see them, they’re stored encrypted, and we delete them 30 days after we approve or turn them down. Your mobile number and UPI ID are stored encrypted, with a keyed fingerprint of the number so that one number can’t apply twice. We may call you to check your application. If you apply but don’t send your documents within 7 days, we delete the application. If we decline it, we keep your name, number and vehicle so the same application isn’t made again. When you accept a trip, its riders see your name, vehicle, registration number, mobile number and UPI ID, so they can find, call and pay you. If a rider presses SOS, the link they send to their contacts shows your name, vehicle, registration number and mobile number. Riders can rate you and see your average rating once you have 3.

If you join a driver team, its other drivers see your name, vehicle and registration number. When a teammate offers you a trip you see its stops, riders’ first names and fare; if you take it, you become its driver as above, and its riders are told about the change and see the earlier messages in its chat. We keep a record of who offered and took each trip.

Who else handles it

We don’t sell your data. Cloudflare hosts the site and database, an email provider (Resend) delivers sign-in codes, ride emails and news, and your browser’s push service delivers notifications. They process data only to provide those services. Maps on Pogalaame are drawn by us, so no map service sees your trips.

The Pogalaame apps for Android and iPhone are this website, shown full screen: on Android in Chrome, on iPhone in the app’s web view. They collect nothing more than the website does. On Android, notifications come through Chrome as they do on the web; the iPhone app doesn’t send notifications yet.

How long we keep it

Your choices

You must be 18 or older to use Pogalaame. To see, correct or delete your data, or to raise a concern, email privacy@pogalaame.com.