These terms cover your use of Habitate — browsing, creating a profile, buying a pass and connecting with other members.
What Habitate is
Habitate introduces people who have a room or home to people looking for one, and helps flatmates find each other.
We are not an agent, broker, landlord or tenant, and we are not a party to any rent, deposit, lease or leave-and-licence arrangement you make. We do not own, manage or inspect any property listed here, and we do not guarantee that you will find a flatmate or a place, or that anyone you meet through Habitate is who they say they are.
We verify that you control your mobile number. We do not run background, criminal, credit, employment or identity checks on anyone, and any verification badge we may show in the future confirms only the specific check it names — never a person's trustworthiness or intentions.
Anything you agree with another member — rent, deposit, who moves in when — is between the two of you. We are not responsible for that agreement or for either side keeping to it.
Who can use it
You must be at least 16 years old to create an account. If you are 16 or 17, you may only use Habitate with the consent of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these terms on your behalf and is responsible for your use of the app. If you are 18 or older, you must also be able to enter into a contract under Indian law.
Give us accurate information about yourself and keep it up to date.
One account per person, tied to a verified mobile number. Accounts cannot be sold, shared or transferred.
You are responsible for what happens on your account. Tell us at once if you think someone else has got into it.
We may refuse, suspend or close an account if we reasonably believe someone does not meet these conditions.
Passes and payment
Browsing is free. A pass makes your profile visible in other members' results and lets you exchange contact details.
- 1 week — ₹30
- 2 weeks — ₹55
- 1 month — ₹99
Launch offer: the first 5,000 members get a pass at no charge. When that limit is reached the offer ends and standard pricing applies to everyone. We may raise the limit later; we will never lower it below the number of passes already claimed.
Waitlist: if you gave us your number on our website before launch, you get one free week the first time you sign up with that number.
Referrals: each member gets a code. You earn a free week for each new member who joins using it, up to three. Someone joining with your code gets a free week only while the launch offer above is still running. We may withhold or reverse a reward where we reasonably suspect abuse, such as self-referral or fake accounts, and will tell you why if we do.
Time always stacks. Buying more while a pass is running adds to what you have — you never lose days by renewing early.
Pausing hides your profile and stops the clock. The days you had left are returned to you when you resume.
Payments are handled by our payment partner, Razorpay. We never see or store your card or UPI credentials.
Cancellation and refunds
A pass is a digital service that activates immediately on payment, so — as with most digital subscriptions — it is non-refundable once active. This is shown to you before you pay, on the payment screen as well as here.
The exceptions: where the law gives you a right we cannot contract out of; where you were charged in error or charged twice for the same pass; or where we end your access without cause or withdraw Habitate entirely while you hold unused time, in which case we refund the unused portion.
If you believe you were charged incorrectly, write to us at support.habitate@gmail.com with the payment date and amount and we will look into it and respond within 5 working days.
There is no auto-renewal — a pass simply ends. Prices may change; a change never affects a pass you have already bought.
Your content
Your photos and words stay yours.
You give us permission to host, store, back up, resize, compress, cache and distribute your photos and profile text — including through the content-delivery and cloud storage providers we use — for the purpose of running Habitate and showing your profile to other members, for as long as your account exists and for the retention periods below. We do not use your content for advertising, and we do not sell it.
Only upload what you have the right to upload — photographs of a property you genuinely have the right to offer, and pictures of other people only with their agreement.
We may remove anything that breaks these terms, is unlawful, or is reported and found to be inappropriate.
How to behave here
Do not post false, misleading or impersonating information, including listing a property you have no right to offer.
Do not use Habitate to advertise commercial accommodation services, brokerage, or unrelated goods and services.
Do not harass, threaten, defraud or stalk another member.
Habitate lets members state and filter by a gender preference for their future flatmate. We treat this differently from other preferences because shared housing usually means sharing a bedroom, bathroom or other private space, and a person's comfort and safety in their own home is a legitimate, narrow reason to prefer living with a particular gender — the same reasoning that lets shared-accommodation listings do this everywhere, distinct from renting or selling property generally, which this is not. Preferences or refusals based on caste, religion, disability or place of origin are not allowed here, in a bio, in a photo, or in a direct message, and we may remove any listing or message that uses a gender preference as cover for one of these instead.
Do not scrape, copy or bulk-extract profiles or contact details.
Do not try to get around the pass system or into another member's account.
Your data and when we delete it
How we handle personal data is set out in our Privacy Policy — this section is a summary of it.
The pin you drop is used to work out distance. Other members see a locality name and an approximate distance — never your coordinates or address — unless you choose, connection by connection, to share your exact location.
Contact details are revealed when you accept a connection request, or, if you have turned on Open profile, to members holding an active pass.
We delete your data when: your pass has been expired for 30 days without renewal; you never took a pass at all and 30 days have passed since you created your profile; you tell us you have found a place, in which case your profile is hidden at once and deleted after 7 days; or you delete your account.
A free pass counts as a pass. Claiming one starts your subscription at ₹0 and the 30-day clock runs from when it expires, exactly as it would for a paid one.
If your pass lapsed or you found a place, your login survives so you can start again with a fresh profile. If you never took a pass, or you delete your account yourself, the account goes too and your number is released.
If you tell us you have found a place, any unused pass time is forfeited and is not refunded — the same rule that applies if you delete your account outright, or withdraw your consent to our processing your data, since either of those also ends the service we can provide you.
We may keep limited records where the law requires it, such as transaction records for tax purposes, detached from your profile once the rest of your data is deleted.
Staying safe
Meet in a public place first, tell someone where you are going, and do not transfer money or a deposit before you have seen a property in person and satisfied yourself that it is genuine.
We give you reporting and blocking tools and we review reports, but we cannot monitor every interaction and cannot guarantee any outcome.
We do not vet members or properties. Our safety tips, reporting tools and any badge we may show are not a substitute for your own judgement and checks, and are not a guarantee of anyone's identity, intentions, or of a property's condition or legality. Verifying ownership, agreements and identity is on you.
Liability
Habitate is provided as it is. We do not promise that you will find a flatmate or a place.
To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for the conduct of any member, the condition or legality of any property, any tenancy or financial arrangement between members, or any loss arising from meeting or living with someone you found here.
Where liability cannot be excluded, our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the smallest amount the law allows us to set it at — which, where the law permits, is nil.
Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.
Changes and ending
We may change these terms. For most changes, telling you in the app is enough, and continuing to use Habitate afterwards means you accept them. For a change to how much of your data we collect or share, to the payment or refund terms, or to the gender-preference rule above, we will ask you to actively re-accept before you can keep using Habitate — we record the version you agreed to, so we can tell when that is needed.
You can stop using Habitate and delete your account at any time from Settings.
We may suspend or close an account that breaches these terms, that we reasonably believe is fraudulent or unsafe, or where the law requires it.
If we withdraw the service entirely while you hold a paid pass, we will refund the unused portion.
Complaints, grievance officer and law
For anything at all, write to support.habitate@gmail.com. We reply within 24 hours, and if we cannot resolve it straight away we will keep you updated at least every 15 days until we do.
Grievance Officer (Information Technology Rules, 2021) and data-protection contact (Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023): Habitate Labs LLP, reachable at support.habitate@gmail.com.
Before either of us starts any formal proceeding, we will each try in good faith to resolve the complaint directly for at least 30 days.
These terms are governed by the laws of India. Subject to your right as a consumer to approach a consumer forum with jurisdiction over your own place of residence, under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, the courts at Hyderabad, Telangana have jurisdiction.