Terms of Use

These terms are the agreement between you and Sekhar Mridha, sole proprietor, trading as Pados (Sole proprietorship), which operates the Pados platform — the app business.pados.app and this website. Using Pados means accepting them. If you do not accept them, do not use Pados.

They are published as the “rules and regulations, privacy policy and user agreement” that Rule 3(1) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 requires an intermediary to publish.

One note on which is which. The Pados app on Google Play is for buying: finding the shops near you and ordering from them for delivery or collection. Running a shop on Pados is done in the separate Pados Partner app (with sales reports and credits on the website), and delivery partners use the separate Pados Rider app; neither is in the shopping app. Sections below that talk about your shop apply to you if you are a shopkeeper, wherever you are reading this.

1. The single most important thing

Pados does not sell anything.Pados is a technology company. It makes software a local shop runs its day on — a storefront, a catalogue, an orders screen, stock, reports and tools for recording deliveries — and it licenses that software to the shop. In the words of the law it is an intermediary under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and a “marketplace e-commerce entity” under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020, because it provides an information technology platform on which a buyer and a seller meet. Those are the names the statutes give to what is described here; they do not make Pados the seller.

When you order a kilo of rice through Pados, the contract for that rice is between you and the shop. The shop is the seller. The shop owns the goods, sets the price, packs the bag, and takes your money. Pados owns none of it, touches none of it, and takes no commission on it.

This is not a disclaimer bolted on to avoid responsibility. It describes how the software actually works:

• Pados never holds your money.You pay the shop directly — cash at the counter, or UPI to the shop’s own ID. No payment passes through Pados, so there is nothing for Pados to hold, delay, or refund.
• Pados does not set prices. Every price you see was typed in by the shopkeeper.
• Pados does not carry stock,pack orders, or deliver them. Where delivery exists it is the shop’s own delivery, made by a rider the shop added, chose and pays.
• Pados does not accept or refuse your order. The shop does that, and the shop says how long it will take.

What Pados does check. Two things, and it is honest about both because they are the reason the app is safe to use. Pados approves a shop before it can take orders, and decides which kinds of goods that trade may list. And Pados approves products: items already in the shared Pados catalogue are approved, and anything new a shop types in is reviewed by Pados or by the Growth Partner for that area before a customer can see it. That is how goods that are banned, restricted or unlawful are kept off the app.

That check is about what may be listed. It is not an inspection of the particular goods a shop hands you. Pados does not see, weigh, taste, store or handle anything a shop sells, so approving that “rice, 1 kg” may appear on the app is not a statement about the rice in your bag. The shop is answerable for that.

What this means when something goes wrong is set out in the Cancellations & Refunds policy, and Pados’s job when a shop will not engage is set out in Grievance Redressal. Pados being an intermediary does not mean you are on your own.

2. Your account

• You must be 18 or older to hold a Pados account.
• Give real details. A shopkeeper who cannot ring you cannot deliver to you, and a false name on an order is a problem for a real person somewhere.
• Your account is yours to look after. Anything done while signed in as you is treated as done by you, so tell us at once if you think somebody else has your password.
• One person, one account. Do not sign up on somebody else’s behalf without their say-so.
• You can delete your account at any time, in the app or at padosandaman.in/delete-account.

3. What you may not do

Do not use Pados to:

• break any law of India, or help anybody else break one;
• place orders you have no intention of collecting or paying for;
• impersonate anybody, or misrepresent who you are or who you are connected to;
• upload anything obscene, defamatory, threatening, hateful, invasive of somebody’s privacy, harmful to a child, or infringing somebody else’s intellectual property;
• list or order anything whose sale is restricted or prohibited by law;
• list alcohol, tobacco, nicotine in any form, or prescription medicines. These are not allowed on Pados at all, whatever a shop is licensed to sell elsewhere;
• scrape, copy or republish shop catalogues, prices or photographs in bulk;
• probe, overload, reverse-engineer or interfere with the app, the servers, or anybody else’s use of them;
• upload a virus or anything else designed to damage or take over a system.

Pados may remove a listing, a photograph or a shop page that breaks any of these, and may suspend or close the account behind it, with no notice where the content is unlawful or dangerous. Pados will cooperate with lawful requests from a court or an authorised government agency.

Telling us about something. Every shop page in the app has a Report this shop link, which writes to pados.andaman@gmail.com with the shop named. You can write to the same address about a listing, a photograph or a review. A person reads it, and acts on anything that breaks the rules above — a listing can be taken down the same day. If you are not satisfied with the answer, section 9 is the grievance procedure and the officer who owns it.

4. Content you put in

Your shop’s photographs, product names and descriptions stay yours. You give Pados permission to store them and to show them to people using Pados, which is the only way a catalogue can work. That permission ends when you remove the content or close your account, except for copies in backups, which age out.

You are responsible for having the right to upload what you upload. Do not put somebody else’s photograph on your product.

5. Availability

Pados is provided as it is. We work to keep it running, and we do not promise it will never be down. It depends on internet connectivity in an island archipelago, on Google’s and Apple’s notification services, and on our hosting provider — none of which we control.

5A. Delivery and payment

A shop delivers its own orders, with its own riders. The order is between you and the shop. For a delivery you are shown a four-digit PIN: read it out to the person at your door when you have your order, and not before. They are asked for it and never shown it.

You pay the shop directly, in cash or by UPI to the shop’s own ID. If you pay at the door, the delivery partner may show the shop’s payment QR and photograph your payment confirmation so the shop can check it; that photo goes only to the shop and is deleted when they confirm. While a delivery partner is bringing your order, you can see how far away they are; that stops when it arrives. Pados never receives or holds your money.

6. What Pados is responsible for, and what it is not

Pados is responsible for the Pados software: for running it, for keeping your data as described in the Privacy Policy, and for answering grievances within the timelines in Grievance Redressal.

Pados is not responsible for the quality, safety, weight, freshness or description of the goods a shop sells you, for a shop’s prices, for whether a shop accepts your order, or for whether it turns up with your delivery. Those belong to the shop, which owns the goods, set the price, packed the bag, took the money and chose the rider.

Pados does not initiate a sale, does not set what anything costs and does not own or handle stock. It does review which products may be listed, as section 1 describes, so that banned and unlawful goods stay off the app. Pados does not claim that reviewing a listing makes it answerable for the goods themselves, and it does not claim that the review never happened: it is a check on what may be offered, carried out for safety, and it is not an inspection of any particular item a shop sells. Where the law attaches consequences to that review, Pados accepts them.

Nothing here limits any right you have under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 against the seller, or any liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

To the extent the law allows, Pados’s total liability to a person using it free of charge is limited to putting the software right; and to a paying merchant, to the fees that merchant paid in the three months before the claim. Pados is not liable for lost profits or lost business.

7. Changes

These terms can change — a new feature, a new law. Material changes are announced in the app before they take effect, and the date at the top of this page changes. Continuing to use Pados after that means accepting the new version.

8. Ending it

You can stop using Pados whenever you like, and delete your account. Pados may suspend or end an account that breaks these terms, that is being used fraudulently, or where the law requires it — with notice and a reason, unless giving notice would itself be unlawful.

9. Law and jurisdiction

Indian law governs these terms. Courts at Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands have jurisdiction, without taking away any right you have to complain to a consumer forum where you live.

10. Reaching us

General questions: pados.andaman@gmail.com. For a formal complaint, use Grievance Redressal, which names the officer and the timelines that bind them.

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