Location access, in plain terms
If you are a student: we ask for your location once, when you set your delivery address. You can skip this and type your address by hand instead.
If you are a delivery partner: once you pick up an order, we collect your precise location — including while the app is in the background or your screen is off — so students can see your live delivery location and ETA. A persistent notification ("Delivering meals…") stays visible the whole time tracking is active. This stops automatically when all your deliveries are marked complete. Location pings are deleted automatically after 24 hours. You will see a clear disclosure dialog explaining this before the app requests background location permission.
Android asks your permission before any of this happens. You can say no, and you can revoke it later in Settings.
Who is responsible for your data. The Bright's Canteen mess service is run by Brights Canteen, and Brights Canteen decides what data the app collects and why. In the language of the DPDP Act, they are the Data Fiduciary.
Lyzoo Technologies Pvt Ltd built the app and runs the servers on Brights Canteen's instructions, under a written contract. Lyzoo is the Data Processor: they cannot use your data for their own purposes. Lyzoo also publishes the app on Google Play on Brights Canteen's behalf.
Questions and complaints go to Brights Canteen — see section 10.
What we collect
A canteen hands you a bill listing what you consumed. This is ours, listing what the app consumes.
Creates your account and lets the kitchen and your delivery partner reach you.
Stored only as a one-way hash. Nobody at Brights Canteen or Lyzoo can read it.
Tells the delivery partner which door to knock on.
Students: used once to fill in your address. Delivery partners: used during an active delivery only, to draw your position on the student's map. See the box above.
Lets us tell you your meal is at the door, or that your plan is about to expire. Turn off notifications and we stop using it.
Runs the service: the kitchen cooks the right headcount, and you are not billed for meals you skipped in time.
Credits you for skipped meals and produces your monthly bill. Card and UPI details are handled by our payment gateway and never reach our servers.
Only what you choose to type. Complaints are visible to hostel administrators so they can fix the problem.
Diagnoses crashes and blocks abuse. Kept in server logs.
We never sell your data, rent it, share it with advertisers, or use it to build an advertising profile. Bright's Canteen carries no ads and no third-party trackers.
Why we use it
Every item above exists to run the mess service. Concretely, we use it to:
- Sign you in and keep your session secure.
- Show today's menu and record when you skip a meal.
- Tell the kitchen how many plates to cook each morning.
- Assign your meal to a delivery partner and show you where they are.
- Credit your wallet when you skip a meal before the cut-off time.
- Generate your monthly invoice and remind you before your plan expires.
- Route your complaint to the right hostel administrator.
- Investigate bugs, abuse, and payment disputes.
We do not use your data for anything else. If that ever changes, we will update this page and tell you in the app before the change takes effect.
Our legal basis
We process your personal data under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, on two grounds.
Your consent
You give it when you create an account, and separately when Android asks you to allow location access. Consent is specific, informed, and yours to withdraw at any time — see section 07.
Legitimate use
Once you have subscribed to a meal plan, we process the data needed to actually deliver those meals and bill you for them. We also retain financial records for as long as tax and accounting law requires.
How long we keep it
- Location pings — deleted automatically after 24 hours.
- Push notification token — until you disable notifications or delete the app.
- Meal, skip, and delivery records — for the life of your account, then 90 days.
- Invoices, payments, wallet ledger — eight years, as Indian tax law requires. We cannot delete these earlier.
- Complaints and suggestions — three years after resolution.
- Server logs — 30 days.
- Everything else — deleted within 30 days of you closing your account.
How we protect it
Passwords are hashed with bcrypt and are unreadable even to us. Traffic between the app and our servers travels over TLS. Access to the production database is restricted to a small number of named Lyzoo engineers, and every administrative action is written to an audit log that Brights Canteen can review.
No system is perfectly secure. If a breach ever affects your data, we will notify you and the Data Protection Board of India as the law requires.
Your rights
Under the DPDP Act, 2023, you can exercise all of the following. Write to us at the address in section 10 and we will respond within 30 days.
- See your data. Ask for a copy of everything we hold about you, and a summary of who we shared it with.
- Correct it. Fix a wrong phone number, room, or name — most of this you can edit yourself in the app.
- Erase it. Ask us to delete your account. We will, except for the financial records that tax law forces us to keep.
- Withdraw consent. Revoke location permission in Android Settings, or turn off notifications. The app keeps working; the features that depend on them stop.
- Nominate someone. Name a person to exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapacitated.
- Complain. Raise a grievance with us first. If we do not resolve it, escalate to the Data Protection Board of India.
Students under 18
Some hostel residents are minors. Where a user is under 18, Indian law requires verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian before we process their data, and it forbids us from tracking them or targeting advertising at them.
We show no advertising to anyone and we do not profile users. Where a hostel enrolls a minor, the hostel administration is responsible for obtaining and recording guardian consent before adding that student to the platform. If you believe a minor has been registered without consent, contact us and we will remove the account.
Changes to this policy
When we change this page, we update the effective date at the top and bump the version number. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will show you a notice in the app and ask for fresh consent before it applies to you. Past versions are available on request.
Contact us
For any question about this policy, or to exercise a right in section 07, write to the Grievance Officer at Brights Canteen. We reply within 30 days.
brightscanteen@gmail.com Grievance OfficerBrights Canteen
brightscanteen@gmail.com
India
App developer
Lyzoo Technologies Pvt Ltd
Technical issues only