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Privacy Policy

Last updated: September 3, 2026

Startup Atlas ("we", "us") is an independent project, not a company with a call center or a legal department — this page explains, in plain terms, what we collect, why, and how you can control it. If anything here is unclear, email parthsohaney04@gmail.com and a person (not a bot) will answer.

1. What we collect

Depending on how you use the site, we collect:

  • Basic visit data — the page you viewed, the page you came from (referrer), and which city section you were browsing. Logged against a day, not against you: no cookie, account, or device fingerprint ties this back to an individual visitor.
  • Submission/claim form data — company details you enter, plus your email (kept private, used only if we need to follow up — never published).
  • Advertise form data — the city, ad type, and contact email you provide to book a slot.
  • Referral program data — if you offer a referral: your name, work email, role, LinkedIn URL, an optional pitch, and a proof-of-employment image (a badge, an internal tool screenshot, a redacted payslip — whatever you're comfortable sharing). If you request a referral: your name, email, phone (optional), and a resume link.
  • Payment verification data — for ads, subscriptions, or referral/connect payments (all handled manually via UPI, never through a card form), we collect your name (optional), an email or phone to reach you, and the UPI transaction ID (UTR) you provide so we can confirm the payment against our bank statement. We never see or store your card number, UPI PIN, or bank credentials — that transaction happens entirely inside your own UPI app.
  • Public business contacts — HR, careers, and leadership emails or URLs we find on a company's own public website or careers page, published with a link to where we sourced them. See §5.

We do not run ad-tracking pixels, third-party analytics scripts, or cross-site tracking of any kind. Our hosting and storage providers (see §4) may keep their own standard technical logs (like IP address, as part of normal request handling) — that's infrastructure-level logging outside our application, not something we separately collect or query.

2. Why we collect it

  • Basic visit data — to see which cities and pages people actually use, so we build the right things next.
  • Form data — to do the thing the form says it does: review a submission, confirm a payment, connect a referral to a candidate.
  • Contact emails — to reach you about your own submission/booking/offer, never for marketing.

We don't sell, rent, or trade your data to anyone, for any reason.

3. Cookies

Browsing Startup Atlas sets no cookies on your device. There's no analytics cookie, no advertising cookie, and no cross-site identifier — the visit data described in §1 is counted without one, which is why we can't (and don't) tie it back to you.

4. Who we share data with

We use a small number of infrastructure providers to run the site. None of them get your data for their own use:

  • Cloudflare R2 — object storage for company logos and referral proof images.
  • Our hosting provider — runs the application and database.
  • OpenStreetMap / Nominatim — used only to geocode business addresses; no personal data is sent there.

We'd only disclose data beyond this if legally required to (e.g. a valid court order) — nothing broader.

5. The public contact directory

Startup Atlas publishes free HR/careers/leadership contact info to make job-hunting easier. Two rules keep this honest:

  • We only publish contacts that were already public on a company's own website — never a residential address, personal number, or anything scraped from a source that wasn't meant to be public.
  • Every published contact links to the exact page we sourced it from, so you can verify it yourself.

If a contact belongs to you and you'd like it removed — no reason required — email parthsohaney04@gmail.com and we'll take it down.

6. Referral proof images

Proof-of-employment images submitted with a referral offer are reviewed by hand to confirm the offer is genuine, then kept on file for that purpose — they are never shown publicly or shared with the candidate, the employer, or anyone else.

7. How long we keep data

Submission, advertise, and payment-verification records are kept for as long as the related listing/ad/offer is active, plus a reasonable period after for our own record-keeping (e.g. resolving a payment dispute) — after which we delete what's no longer needed. Referral proof images are deleted once an offer is rejected or no longer active. You can ask us to delete your data earlier at any time (see §8).

8. Your choices

You can, at any time, by emailing parthsohaney04@gmail.com:

  • ask what data we hold about you;
  • ask us to correct or delete it;
  • ask us to remove a public contact, submission, or referral offer tied to you;
  • opt out of any future contact from us.

We'll respond within a reasonable time — this is a small, human-run project, not an automated request queue.

9. Children

Startup Atlas isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect data from anyone under 18.

10. Security

We take reasonable technical measures to protect what we hold — encrypted connections, access controls on internal tooling, and no card or bank credentials ever touching our servers. That said, no online service can guarantee perfect security, and we won't pretend to be the exception.

11. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a meaningful way, we'll update the date at the top of this page. Continuing to use the site after a change means you're okay with the update.

12. Contact

Questions, requests, or just a data-privacy concern you want to raise — email parthsohaney04@gmail.com.