Apture Terms of Use

1. About these Terms and who we are

Apture (apture.in) is an online platform where people with projects in architecture, interior design, event planning and photography find professionals, agree the work and follow it through to handover.

Apture is operated by Vancha Praneeth Reddy, an individual resident in India, as sole proprietor, trading as "Apture" ("Apture", "we", "us"). Apture is not yet a registered company. Our address for notices is 5th Floor, RMZ Spire, Silpa Gram Craft Village, HITEC City, Hyderabad, Telangana 500032, and you can reach us at support@apture.in.

These Terms of Use ("Terms") are an agreement between you and us. They apply whenever you visit or use Apture, whether or not you have an account. By creating an account, or by using Apture, you agree to these Terms and to our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, please do not use Apture.

These Terms are an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and are accepted electronically.

2. What Apture is, and what it is not

Apture is a meeting place. It lets clients post a requirement, professionals send proposals, both sides discuss and agree the details, and both follow the work on a shared Timeline.

Apture is not a party to any agreement between a client and a professional, and it is not an employer, agent or partner of either. Clients and professionals talk, decide and agree everything between themselves. In particular, Apture:

• does not take part in, draft, check, approve or enforce any agreement between a client and a professional;
• does not set prices, take any commission or share of what a client pays, or process, hold (including in escrow), collect, transfer or guarantee any money (section 6);
• does not supervise, manage or inspect any work;

• does not verify professionals' identity, qualifications, licences, registrations or insurance, and does not guarantee the quality, safety, legality or timeliness of any work;
• does not endorse any professional, profile, portfolio, proposal or review;
• does not give architectural, structural, design, legal, tax or any other professional advice. Any templates, topics or suggested wording on Apture are aids only.

Clients should make their own checks before hiring (for example, an architect's registration with the Council of Architecture), and professionals should satisfy themselves about the client and the project.

3. Who can use Apture, and your account

• You must be 18 or older and able to enter into a binding contract under Indian law. Apture is not meant for anyone under 18; if we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we will close it.
• Give accurate, current information, and keep it up to date.
• One person per account. Do not share your password or let anyone else use your account. Every account has its own account ID.
• Keep your password safe. We recommend turning on two-step sign-in. Tell us straight away at support@apture.in if you think someone else has used your account.
• You can sign up with an email and password or with Google. If you use Google, Google's own terms also apply to that sign-in.
• We may refuse an account, or suspend or close one, as set out in section 12.

4. Kinds of accounts

• Client accounts are for people and businesses who want work done.
• Professional accounts are for individual professionals.
• Company accounts are for studios and firms. The person who opens a company account confirms that they are authorised to act for the business. The company's owner and admins decide who joins the team and what each person may do, and the company is responsible for what its team does on Apture. When a team member leaves, what they posted for the company stays with the company.

5. How Apture works

1. A client posts a requirement describing the project.
2. Professionals in that field can see it and send a proposal.
3. The client and each professional can talk the proposal through in Messages, and share whatever they choose (for example a quote, their terms or an agreement of their own).
4. When the client hires one professional, the project gets a Timeline: a shared place where the two of them keep their updates, decisions, documents, approvals, files and messages, up to the handover.
5. After the handover, the client may leave a review (section 10).

Whatever a client and a professional agree is between them alone. Apture does not draft, check, approve or enforce it, and does not become part of it. Documents, approvals, amounts, payment requests and "paid" marks on Apture are records the two of them keep for themselves: Apture does not check that they are accurate or complete, or that anything recorded was done or paid. Recording something on Apture is not a promise from Apture. Each of them is responsible for what they agree, for doing it, and for any taxes or registrations it needs.

6. Fees and payments

• Apture is free to use at launch. We charge no fee, subscription or commission, and take no share of what a client pays a professional.
• Apture does not process, hold (including in escrow), collect, transfer or guarantee any payment. Amounts shown on Apture (fees, quotations, priced changes, payment requests and "paid" marks) are records the users make for themselves. Clients and professionals pay each other directly, outside Apture, and are each responsible for their own taxes (including GST and TDS where they apply).
• If we ever introduce fees, we will tell every registered user by email and with a notice on Apture at least 30 days before they apply, and they will never apply to anything you did before then.

7. Your responsibilities

You agree to:

• use Apture lawfully and honestly, and deal fairly with other users;
• describe yourself, your work and your projects accurately;
• if you are a professional: hold every licence, registration, permit and insurance your work requires, and only show work you did or have the right to show;
• if you are a client: describe your requirement accurately and respond to the professional in good time;
• keep what you record on Apture honest and up to date.

8. What you must not post or do

8.1 Content the law does not allow

You must not host, display, upload, publish, share or send on Apture any content that:

1. belongs to someone else and that you have no right to share;
2. is obscene, pornographic or paedophilic; invades another person's privacy, including bodily privacy; harasses anyone on the basis of gender; is racially or ethnically objectionable; relates to or encourages money laundering or gambling; or promotes enmity between groups on grounds of religion or caste with the intent to incite violence;
3. is harmful to a child;
4. infringes any patent, trademark, copyright or other proprietary right;
5. deceives or misleads anyone about where a message came from, or knowingly and intentionally shares information that is patently false or untrue;
6. impersonates another person;
7. threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order; incites any cognisable offence; prevents the investigation of any offence; or insults another nation;
8. contains a software virus or any other code, file or program designed to interrupt, destroy or limit the functioning of any computer resource;
9. is an online game that has not been verified as permissible under law, or advertises or promotes one; or
10. breaks any law in force in India.

8.2 Apture's own rules

You must also not:

• create fake accounts, profiles, portfolios, requirements or proposals;
• write, buy, sell or arrange fake or paid reviews, or pressure anyone over a review;
• send spam or unrelated advertising, or contact people for purposes that have nothing to do with a project;
• harass, threaten, abuse or discriminate against anyone;
• share another person's personal data without their permission;
• present AI-generated or edited images as real photographs of your work without saying so;
• copy, scrape or harvest data from Apture, or use bots, except as we allow;
• try to get into accounts, data or systems you are not allowed to, test or break our security, or interfere with how Apture runs.

9. Your content

• You own what you post: your profile, portfolio, requirements, proposals, files, messages and reviews ("your content").
• You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display, adapt for display (for example, resize images) and share your content, only to run, show and improve Apture and to show your public profile and public pages. This licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies we must keep by law (section 13) and content already shared with another user on a project (for example, a Timeline the other party keeps).
• You confirm that you have the rights to everything you post, including the consent of anyone who appears in your photos and of the photographer.
• The Apture name, logo, design and software belong to us. You may not use them without our written permission.
• If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them freely.

10. Reviews

• Only a client who approved the final handover of a project on Apture can review that project's professional.
• Apture checks every review before it is published, to make sure it comes from that project and follows these Terms. We do not edit reviews, and we do not hold back a genuine review because it is negative.
• We may decline or remove a review that breaks these Terms (for example, one that is abusive, shares personal data, or is not about the project).
• A professional who believes a review is unfair or breaks these Terms can tell us through the Grievance Officer (section 19).

11. Reporting, removal and enforcement

• You can report a person, a profile or a message on Apture. Anyone, with or without an account, can also contact our Grievance Officer (section 19).
• We may remove or hide content, or limit, suspend or close an account, if we believe it breaks these Terms or the law, or to protect other users or Apture.
• Please note: if you break these Terms, we may immediately suspend or end your access and remove the content concerned. You may also be liable to penalties under the law. Where the law requires it (for example under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023, or the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012), we will report offences to the authorities.
• We remove or disable content when a court orders it or an authorised government agency directs it under the law, within the time the law allows.
• We keep content that has been removed, and the related records, for at least 180 days, as the law requires.
• If you believe something on Apture infringes your copyright, write to the Grievance Officer with the details.

12. Ending your use of Apture

• You can delete your account at any time in Settings, and download your data there first.
• We may suspend or close your account if you break these Terms or the law, if we are required to, or if we stop running Apture. Where reasonable, we will tell you why.
• When an account is closed, we keep certain information for the periods the law requires (see the Privacy Policy). What you shared with another user on a project stays available to them.
• Sections 2, 6, 9, 13 to 16, 18 and 20 continue after your account ends.

13. Disputes between users

Any disagreement about a project is between the client and the professional. Apture is not responsible for resolving it, though on request we may share what the Timeline records with the two of you. This does not affect any rights you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, against the other user.

14. Other services

Apture uses other companies to run (for example, for hosting, storage, email and Google sign-in). Links to other websites are for convenience; we are not responsible for them.

15. Availability and changes to Apture

We work to keep Apture available and safe, but we cannot promise it will always be available or free of errors. We may change, add or remove features. Some features may be marked as new or in testing. Please keep your own copies of anything important.

16. Disclaimers and limits on our responsibility

• Apture is provided "as is" and "as available". To the extent the law allows, we give no promise about other users, their work, their content or the outcome of any project.
• To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for indirect, special or consequential loss (for example, lost profit, lost data or lost opportunity), or for anything a client or professional does or does not do.
• To the extent the law allows, our total responsibility to you for any claim is limited to ₹1,000, or the total fees you paid Apture in the 12 months before the claim if that is more. (Apture charges no fees at launch.)
• Nothing in these Terms limits responsibility for fraud, or any right you have that the law does not allow to be limited, including under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

17. If you cause us loss

You agree to make good any loss, claim or expense we suffer because you broke these Terms or the law, because of your content, or because of your dealings with another user, to the extent the law allows.

18. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms. We will tell you about material changes by email and with a notice on Apture at least 15 days before they apply (small corrections, such as typing errors, do not need notice). If you keep using Apture after that, the new Terms apply. If you do not agree, you can delete your account. We will also remind you of these Terms and our rules at least once every three months, as the law requires.

19. Grievance Officer and complaints

Under the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the rules made under it, our Grievance Officer is:

• Name: Vancha Praneeth Reddy
• Email: grievance@apture.in
• Phone: +91 76010 98040
• Address: 5th Floor, RMZ Spire, Silpa Gram Craft Village, HITEC City, Hyderabad, Telangana 500032
• Hours: Monday to Friday, 10 am to 6 pm IST (except public holidays)

Anyone, with or without an account, can write to the Grievance Officer, or use the complaint form on our Contact page (apture.in/contact#grievances), which gives you a reference number. Please say who you are, what the complaint is about, and where it is on Apture (for example, a link or the account ID).

• We acknowledge a complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 7 days.
• A request to remove content that breaks section 8.1 is dealt with within 36 hours.
• A complaint about content showing a person's private areas, nudity, a sexual act, or an impersonating or morphed image of a person is acted on within 2 hours.
• If you are not satisfied with the Grievance Officer's decision, you may appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee (https://www.gac.gov.in) within 30 days of the decision.

20. Law and courts

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Subject to your rights to go to a consumer commission where you live, or to the Data Protection Board of India, the courts at Hyderabad, Telangana have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute about these Terms or Apture.

21. General

• These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and us about Apture.
• If any part is found unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• If we do not enforce a right straight away, we have not given it up.
• Transfer to a company. We intend to form a company to run Apture. We may transfer these Terms, and the operation of Apture together with your data, to that company or another successor. We will tell you before this happens, and you can delete your account if you do not agree.
• We are not responsible for delays caused by events beyond our reasonable control.
• We send notices to the email on your account or on Apture. You can send notices to support@apture.in or our postal address.
• These Terms are written in English.

See also our Privacy Policy. Questions or complaints: Grievance Officer.