Merchant Agreement

This agreement is between your business (“you”, “the shop”) and Anita Mridha, sole proprietor, trading as Pados, which operates Pados. It applies from the moment you create a shop on Pados, and it sits on top of the Terms of Use, which also apply to you.

You are the seller. Pados is not. Every sale you make through Pados is a contract between you and your customer. That is the arrangement, and most of what follows comes out of it.

1. What Pados gives you

• Billing, inventory, catalogue and reports — free, permanently. Not a trial. Not a promotional period. Counter billing does not expire, does not degrade, and does not start charging you later.
• Zero commission. Pados takes no percentage of any sale, bill, or order, whether it happens at your counter or through the app. The money a customer pays is your money and it goes to you.
• A listing, if you subscribe — your shop shown to customers nearby, with pickup and, where you offer it, delivery.

2. What you undertake

Rule 5 of the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 requires a marketplace to obtain an undertaking from every seller on it. By listing on Pados you give it. You undertake that:

• Your descriptions are true. The name, weight, quantity, price, photograph and description of everything you list correspond to the actual thing you will hand over. A photograph of a product you do not stock is a false description.
• Your prices are your real prices. The total shown to a customer is what they pay. You will not add a charge at handover that was not shown at checkout.
• You hold the licences your trade requires — an FSSAI registration or licence if you sell food, a drug licence if you sell medicines, GST registration if your turnover requires it — and you will keep them current.
• You will not list anything you may not lawfully sell,including prescription medicines without the prescription and the licence, alcohol, tobacco to a minor, or anything restricted under any law applying in the Andaman & Nicobar Islands.
• You will honour orders you accept, at the price and quantity accepted, or cancel promptly and tell the customer why.
• You will handle your customers’ grievances, including refunds and replacements, as set out in section 5.
• Your business details are accurate — legal name, address, phone number, and GSTIN where you have one — and you will keep them updated. Pados displays them to customers because the E-Commerce Rules require a marketplace to.

3. What it costs

Billing is free. Selling online — taking pickup or delivery orders from customers — is a paid subscription:

What counts towards the 100

Bills you ring up at your counter are never counted. Not towards the 100, not towards anything. Counter billing is free, unlimited, and stays that way — if you never take an online order you never pay us a rupee.

Of your online orders, one counts unless it fell through:

• Cancelled — by you or by the customer: does not count.
• Returned after handover: does not count.
• Everything else counts, including an order still being packed. An order you accept and hand over has used one of your hundred.

So a month with ten online orders and three cancellations uses seven. The allowance comes back the moment an order is cancelled — you are never charged allowance for a sale that did not happen.

The count resets at the start of each billing period, and running out never touches your counter billing: your till keeps working exactly as before, and only new online orders are paused.

Prices are in Indian rupees and include any tax unless the invoice says otherwise. Fees are charged in advance for the period you choose.

If prices change, existing subscribers get at least 30 days’ notice before the new price applies to a renewal, and can cancel instead.

Refunds on subscription fees are covered by the Cancellations & Refunds policy.

4. How you get paid

Directly. A customer pays you in cash at handover, or by UPI to your own UPI ID, which is why Pados asks you for it. No payment passes through Pados and Pados holds no settlement account, so there is no payout cycle, no reserve, and nothing to withhold.

You are responsible for your own taxes, your own invoices where the law requires one, and your own books. Pados generates GST invoices when you ask it to; it does not file anything on your behalf and is not your accountant.

5. Your customers’ complaints are yours

You sold the goods, so you answer for them. Under Rule 6(5) of the E-Commerce Rules you must appoint someone to handle consumer grievances and respond within the timelines the law sets.

• Wrong, missing, damaged, short-weight or spoiled goods: you put it right.
• Refunds are made by you, by the route the money came — cash back at the counter, or a UPI transfer back to the payer.
• A customer may complain to Pados if you do not respond. Pados will pass it to you and expect an answer. Repeatedly ignoring customers is grounds for delisting.

6. Your data stays yours

• Your catalogue, your stock records, your bills and your customer address book belong to you. Pados stores them for you; it does not own them.
• No other merchant can see them, with one exception you control, set out in section 6A. This is enforced by the database on every query, not by the app, so a modified app cannot get around it.
• Pados does not sell your business data, does not share it with your competitors, and does not use it to compete with you. Pados does not sell goods.
• You can export your data, and you can leave. Closing your account takes your shop off the map immediately; your books stay in your records for the retention period the law sets.
• When you handle your customers’ personal data through Pados, you are responsible for handling it lawfully under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023.

6A. The shared product catalogue

Pados keeps a catalogue of products that every shop can pick from, so a new shopkeeper can stock their shelf by tapping rather than typing four hundred items. When you add a product, four things about it join that catalogue:

• the product name;
• the brand;
• the pack size — 500 g, 1 litre; and
• the photograph, if you added one.

These are facts about a manufacturer’s packet. “Parle-G Glucose Biscuits, 250 g” is the same packet in Junglighat and in Diglipur, and it is not a secret of your business.

What is never shared, with anybody, for any reason:

• What you paid for it. Your cost price is never copied, never shown, and never inferred.
• What you sell it for. Your selling price is yours. Another shop cannot see it, and Pados does not publish it.
• The MRP you recorded.
• How many you have, or anything else from your stock records.
• That the product came from your shop. The catalogue does not name the contributing shop to other merchants, and a shared photograph is copied to a neutral location first, so its web address cannot identify you either. Nobody can read the catalogue to work out what you stock.

This is built into the database rather than promised in this paragraph. The shared catalogue has no column that could hold a cost or a selling price, and the migration that creates it fails to apply if anybody ever adds one.

You can switch it off.Settings → The shared catalogue. It is on by default, because a catalogue nobody contributes to helps nobody; turning it off stops future products being shared and costs you nothing else. You keep full use of the catalogue either way.

A photograph you contribute may be shown to other merchants and, where they list the product, to shoppers. You confirm you have the right to share any photograph you upload. Ask us to remove one at any time and we will.

7. Delisting and suspension

Pados may take your shop off the customer-facing listing if:

• you list something you may not lawfully sell;
• your descriptions or prices are persistently false;
• you take orders and repeatedly fail to fulfil them;
• you ignore customer grievances;
• your subscription lapses; or
• a court or a competent authority requires it.

Except where the law or an immediate risk to customers requires otherwise, you will be told what the problem is and given a fair chance to fix it. Delisting removes the public listing. It does not take your billing away and it does not delete your records — your till keeps working.

8. Ending it

Cancel a subscription at any time; it runs to the end of the period already paid for and does not renew. Free billing continues either way. Either side may end this agreement on 30 days’ notice, and Pados may end it immediately for the reasons in section 7.

9. Liability

You indemnify Pados against claims arising from what you sold — its quality, safety, description, legality, or a licence you did not hold. This is the natural consequence of being the seller: Pados cannot answer for a product it never saw.

Pados’s liability to you is limited to the subscription fees you paid in the three months before the claim, and Pados is not liable for lost profits or lost sales. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

10. Law

Indian law governs this agreement. Courts at Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands have jurisdiction.

11. Reaching us

pados.andaman@gmail.com, or the grievance officer for a formal complaint.

Anita Mridha, sole proprietor, trading as Pados
Harinagar, Billiground, North & Middle Andaman, Andaman & Nicobar Islands 744201