Privacy policy

Last updated 19 October 2026

Dekhbhaal is an AI caretaker for older parents, made by the Dekhbhaal team ("we", "us"). This policy explains what Dekhbhaal collects, why, who helps us run it, how long we keep it, and what you can do. It covers everyone who uses Dekhbhaal: the parent, the family who set it up, and the people who come to the house. Questions go to hello@dekhbhaal.app.

The short version: what a parent says to Dekhbhaal is encrypted with a key that belongs to their account alone. The family sees how the parent is, never what they said. Nothing is sold, shared with advertisers or used to train AI, and an account can be exported or deleted whenever you ask. Privacy and safety explains it in plain words.

Whose data this is

Most of what Dekhbhaal holds is about the parent: their words, their voice, their medicines. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, the parent is the person the data belongs to, even when a son or daughter sets Dekhbhaal up and pays. So the parent gives their own consent, in their own language, on their first day, and nothing is sent to them or shown to the family until they do.

What we collect

Accounts

• The family: your email address, which Google or Apple confirm when you sign in; the names and phone numbers you add; and the time you confirmed you are 18 or older.
• The parent: their name and how Dekhbhaal should address them, their phone number, screen language, voice, check-in time and bedtime, the time they agreed on their first day, and their email if the family adds it so they can sign in with it.
• People who come to the house: their name, phone number and language, and the days and times they usually come.
• A notification token for each phone that signs in, so alerts and check-ins can reach it.

What the parent shares with Dekhbhaal (encrypted)

• Their voice notes and what they said, Dekhbhaal's replies and the spoken audio of them, and the photos they show it.
• What Dekhbhaal learns from these: the people, places, plans and stories in their life.
• Papers they photograph to be read aloud, and the messages, screenshots and descriptions of calls they check for a scam. When a caller is put on speaker, the caller's voice and words are used only for that check and never stored.
• Stories they choose to send to the family.

What the family adds (encrypted)

Medicines and their times, appointments and doctors, the names and numbers of the neighbour and the people who come, the family code word, and where home is. Home is used only to check that someone who comes is at the house when they say they've arrived.

What the people who come record

When they arrive and leave; whether they were at home when they said they arrived and how far away they were (never where they were); each medicine given, refused or run out; how the parent seemed and whether they ate; blood pressure and sugar readings, if the family turned that on; and a spoken note, if they leave one. The readings, the note and its transcript are encrypted.

Status codes (not encrypted)

To show the family how the parent is without showing anything they said, Dekhbhaal keeps short status codes that aren't encrypted: talked, no reply, a scam stopped and its kind, a hard moment, a medicine taken or not answered, an appointment kept or missed, a paper read, a visit. They carry no words. Settings such as the check-in time are also kept unencrypted.

To make memory work

For what a parent says, Dekhbhaal keeps lists of numbers that represent its meaning (embeddings), so it can recall related things later. Embeddings aren't encrypted, because they have to be searchable; they contain no words or names, are only ever searched within the parent's own account, and are deleted with it.

Technical and usage data

• Counts, such as how many check-ins were answered in a week, used to understand how Dekhbhaal is used and to run the pilot. These never include anything anyone said.
• AI usage: how many tokens each AI step used, with no account attached, so we can see what Dekhbhaal costs to run.
• Request records kept by our hosting provider for security and to fix problems, such as the time of a request and the network address it came from. Wrong sign-in codes are counted by a keyed fingerprint of the network address, never the address itself. Our own records never contain what anyone said.

We don't use advertising or analytics trackers. This website sets no cookies; the web app keeps your sign-in in your browser's storage.

Why we use it

• To run Dekhbhaal: the daily check-in, replies and memory, scam checks, reading papers, and medicine and appointment reminders.
• To keep the parent safe: when what they say sounds like danger, to answer with 112 and alert the family and the people the family chose.
• To keep the family informed in the way the parent agreed: status, alerts and the weekly note, never words.
• To sign people in, keep accounts secure, and stop abuse.
• To improve Dekhbhaal from counts. People at Dekhbhaal don't read what parents say.

We process this data with the parent's consent, and the family's for their own details, to provide the service they asked for. Consent can be withdrawn at any time by asking us to delete the account.

Who helps us run Dekhbhaal

We use these service providers only to run Dekhbhaal, never so they can use the data for themselves:

• Google Cloud: servers, database, file storage and encryption keys, in Mumbai, India; and AI models on Google Cloud's Vertex AI (Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude where we choose it for a step), which don't use customer data to train models. Data is stored in India; an AI request may be processed outside India.
• Google Firebase Hosting, for this website and the web app.
• Expo, Apple and Google, to deliver notifications to phones. Notifications carry no content: they say only that there is something to see.
• Google and Apple, when someone chooses to sign in with them.

We don't sell data, and we don't share it with advertisers. We would disclose data only where the law requires it.

How long we keep it

• While Dekhbhaal is in use, we keep the account's data until it is deleted.
• Deleting an account signs it out everywhere and stops everything at once. Three days later we destroy the account's key, which makes its data unreadable for good, and then delete it. Signing in during those three days keeps the account.
• Removing someone (a person who comes, a brother or sister, a care company's desk) ends what they can see at once.
• Backups are kept for a short time and then replaced.
• Sign-in codes work once and expire after 24 hours; sessions expire after 90 days.

Your rights

• Know and get a copy: ask us what Dekhbhaal holds, and we'll send an export.
• Correct: the family changes the details they added in settings; a parent can tell Dekhbhaal, or ask us.
• Erase: ask us to delete an account.
• Withdraw consent at any time, which ends the account.
• Choose who sees: a parent can remove anyone who sees how they are, from their own screen.
• Nominate someone to act for you if you die or can't act yourself: tell us who.
• Complain: write to hello@dekhbhaal.app, and we'll reply within 30 days. You can also complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

Security

Each account's content is encrypted with its own key (AES-256-GCM) before it is stored, and that key is protected by Google Cloud's key service. Connections are encrypted. Our systems unlock a parent's data only to do something for them, such as writing the morning check-in, and our team's pages never show it. No system is perfectly secure, but we take every step here seriously, and we will tell you and the Data Protection Board if something goes wrong.

Age

Dekhbhaal is for parents who are 60 or older, set up by an adult. Everyone who signs in on the family side must be 18 or older. It is not for children.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update the date at the top, and tell you in the app if the change matters to how data is used.

Contact

Dekhbhaal, India. Email hello@dekhbhaal.app; this address also reaches the person responsible for privacy questions and complaints.