Terms of Service

1. Agreement to Terms

By accessing or using Aanchal (“the Service”), operated by Aanchal Experiences (OPC) Private Limited (“we”, “us”, “our”), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

The Service consists of two applications: the Parent Portal (for adults) and the Kids Portal (for children aged 3-12, used under adult supervision). Aanchal is a platform for AI-powered learning adventures — not a storytelling or entertainment service.

2. Eligibility

• You must be at least 18 years of age to create a Parent Portal account.
• The Kids Portal is designed for children aged 3-12 and may only be accessed via a Magic Code generated by an authorized adult.
• By creating a child profile, you represent that you are the parent, legal guardian, or authorized caretaker of the child and consent to their use of the Service.

3. Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) Agreement

Aanchal operates on a BYOK model for interactive AI experiences. By providing your API key, you acknowledge and agree that:

• You are solely responsible for obtaining, maintaining, and paying for your API key from Google AI Studio or other supported providers.
• Your API key is encrypted (AES-256-GCM) before storage and is never stored in plaintext.
• We create short-lived ephemeral tokens (30-minute expiry) from your key for child sessions. The raw key never reaches the child's device.
• You are responsible for any costs, usage limits, or quota overages associated with your API key.
• You may remove your API key at any time from Settings. Removing the key disables interactive mode but does not affect free daily stories.

4. Free Daily Experiences

Aanchal provides free pre-generated learning experiences daily, available to all users without an API key. These experiences are:

• Generated using our own resources and curated from folklore, science, and fun themes across multiple languages.
• Available without requiring a personal API key — powered by Aanchal's platform resources.
• Subject to availability — we reserve the right to modify the number, frequency, or content of free experiences at any time.

5. Parental Responsibility & Content Approval

Aanchal is designed as a controlled AI platform where every AI experience is approved by a trusted adult. However:

• Parents and guardians maintain ultimate responsibility for their children's use of the Kids Portal.
• You are responsible for reviewing story content before sending it to your child.
• You are responsible for setting appropriate restrictions (e.g., “no scary content”) in your child's profile.
• While we employ safety filters and content moderation, no AI system is perfect. Occasional unexpected content may occur during interactive sessions.

6. AI-Generated Content Disclaimer

Stories and learning outcomes generated by the Service use artificial intelligence (Google Gemini). You acknowledge that:

• AI-generated content may occasionally be inaccurate, inappropriate, or unexpected despite our safety measures.
• We use an AI pipeline with safety checks, quality scoring, and content verification, but no system is infallible.
• Interactive (BYOK) content is generated by Google's Gemini API using your API key — Aanchal facilitates but does not generate this content.
• Pre-generated free stories are quality-scored and reviewed before publication.
• We do not guarantee the educational accuracy of learning outcomes or assessments.

7. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

• Use the Service for any unlawful purpose.
• Attempt to bypass parental controls, screen time limits, or safety filters.
• Share Magic Codes with unauthorized individuals.
• Use the Service to generate harmful, abusive, or exploitative content.
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from the Service.
• Use automated tools (bots, scrapers) to access the Service.
• Interfere with the Service's operation or other users' access.

8. Intellectual Property

• The Aanchal brand, logo, design system, prompt corpus, and platform architecture are the intellectual property of Aanchal Experiences (OPC) Private Limited.
• Experiences generated using your BYOK key are considered your content. You retain rights to experiences created through your API key.
• Free daily experiences are our content. You may share them via the in-app share feature but may not redistribute, sell, or commercially exploit them.
• If you contribute an experience to the community (via the Contribute feature), you grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to display and distribute it to other Aanchal users, in anonymised form.

9. Account Termination

• By you: You may delete your account at any time from Settings. Deletion is soft (30-day recovery window) followed by permanent anonymisation of all personal data.
• By us: We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms, engage in harmful behavior, or abuse the Service. We will notify you before or at the time of termination.
• Upon termination, your API key is immediately deleted from our systems. Your data enters the 30-day soft-delete period.

10. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law:

• The Service is provided “as is” and “as available” without warranties of any kind.
• We are not liable for any AI-generated content produced through your BYOK API key.
• We are not liable for any costs incurred through your use of third-party API keys.
• Our total liability for any claims arising from the Service shall not exceed the amount you have paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim (which, under the free BYOK model, is zero).

11. Governing Law & Dispute Resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Any disputes arising from or related to these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Hyderabad, Telangana, India.

Before initiating legal proceedings, both parties agree to attempt resolution through good-faith discussion. You may contact us at aanchal.hq@gmail.com.

12. Founding Member Program

Users who create accounts during the beta period receive “Founding Member” status. This status:

• Is granted automatically to the first 100 families who sign up.
• Is permanent and will not be revoked after the beta period ends.
• May entitle Founding Members to future benefits, early access, or recognition (at our discretion).
• Does not constitute a paid subscription or create any financial obligation.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by posting a notice on our website and updating the “Last Updated” date. Continued use of the Service after changes constitutes acceptance.

14. Contact Us

• General: aanchal.hq@gmail.com
• Legal: aanchal.hq@gmail.com
• Privacy: aanchal.hq@gmail.com
• Entity: Aanchal Experiences (OPC) Private Limited
• Location: Hyderabad, Telangana, India