Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Varnamalai is a matrimonial matchmaking service for South Indian families. This policy explains what personal data we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and what rights you have over it.

The Data Fiduciary responsible for your personal data is:

We are governed primarily by India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025. Because our service is available to families outside India, other laws may also apply to you — see section 12.

This policy covers:

• the Varnamalai mobile app
• app.varnamalai.com
• varnamalai.com
• admin.varnamalai.com (used by our matchmakers)

This notice is available in English. If you would like it in Tamil or another language, write to info@varnamalai.com and we will provide it.

2. Summary

The short version, without prejudice to the detail below:

• We collect the information you or your family put into a profile, including community, religion and horoscope, because that is what matchmaking in this tradition requires.
• We do not show a profile to anyone until the candidate personally consents. If someone creates a profile on your behalf, it stays hidden until you confirm it yourself.
• Our matchmakers are people. They see profiles in order to suggest matches. Introductions are made by them, not automatically.
• We do not sell your data. We do not use it for advertising.
• You can ask us for a copy of your data, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it, at any time — write to info@varnamalai.com.

3. What we collect

3.1 Information you give us

Account information

Mobile phone number, and the one-time codes used to verify it. Email address, if you provide one. Preferred language.

Who is using the account

Whether the account is operated by the candidate themselves or by a family member, and that person's relationship to the candidate.

Profile and biodata

Name, date of birth, gender, height, marital status, photographs, education, occupation, employer, income range, city and country of residence, immigration or visa status, family details (parents' occupations, siblings), dietary habits, languages spoken, and a free-text introduction.

Community, religion and horoscope data

Religion, caste, sub-caste, community and gotram. Birth star (nakshatram), rasi, and the date, exact time and place of birth used to generate a horoscope, together with any resulting dosham indications.

This information sits at the heart of how matches are made in South Indian matrimony, and we collect it for that purpose alone. In some countries — including the European Union and the United Kingdom — data revealing religious or ethnic origin carries additional legal protection, and we handle it accordingly (see section 12).

Documents you upload

Biodata documents in PDF or image form, horoscope charts, and — where you choose to verify your profile — identity or education documents.

Partner preferences

Age, height, education, profession, location, community, diet, and any other criteria you specify.

Communications

Messages you send to our matchmakers or support team, and your responses to match suggestions.

Payment information

Purchases are processed by Google Play (or Apple, where applicable). We receive confirmation that a purchase occurred, the plan purchased, and a transaction identifier. We never receive or store your card, bank or UPI details.

3.2 Information we collect automatically

Device model, operating system version, app version, a device identifier, IP address, approximate location derived from IP address, crash reports, and basic usage data such as screens opened and features used.

3.3 Information from other people

If a parent, sibling or other relative creates a profile for you, we will hold the information they entered before we have heard from you directly. Section 5 explains how that data is treated.

4. Why we process your data

Under the DPDP Act, we process your personal data on the basis of the consent you give us when you create an account and complete your profile, and for certain limited purposes permitted by law.

You gave consent through a clear, standalone notice presented before collection. You may withdraw it at any time — see section 9.

5. Profiles created by family members

Families often create profiles on a candidate's behalf. We allow this, but with a safeguard:

A profile created by someone else is not visible to anyone until the candidate confirms it themselves.

Until that confirmation:

• the profile does not appear in any search or match results
• it is not shown to other families
• it is accessible only to the person who created it and to our matchmaking staff

We confirm consent by contacting the candidate directly on their own verified phone number. If we do not receive confirmation within 90 days, we delete the profile.

If you have discovered that a profile exists about you without your agreement, write to info@varnamalai.com and we will remove it.

Age.Varnamalai is for adults seeking marriage. We do not knowingly create or hold profiles for anyone below the legal minimum age of marriage in their country of residence — in India, 21 for men and 18 for women. Our service is not directed at children, we do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 18, and we do not track or serve targeted advertising to children. If we learn that we hold a child's data, we delete it.

6. Automated processing and human matchmakers

We use automated tools in two places:

Reading your documents. When you upload a biodata document, we use an automated document-understanding service to extract the fields into your profile. You can review and correct everything it produces before your profile goes live.

Suggesting matches. We rank potential matches using criteria including age, height, location, education, community, gotram and horoscope compatibility.

These suggestions are not decisions.No match is sent to anyone automatically. Every suggestion is reviewed by a human matchmaker, who decides whether to pass it on. You can always speak to a person about a suggestion — write to info@varnamalai.com.

Our matchmakers can view profile data in order to do this work. They are bound by written confidentiality obligations, their access is limited to what their role requires, and administrative access to profile data is logged.

7. Who we share your data with

Other families on the platform. When a matchmaker suggests you as a match, the other family sees your profile. What they see depends on your visibility settings and whether you have agreed to the introduction. Contact details are only exchanged once both sides have agreed.

Our matchmakers and staff, as described above.

Data Processors who process data on our behalf under written contracts:

Authorities, where we are required by law to disclose data, or where disclosure is necessary to establish or defend a legal claim.

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it with advertisers or data brokers.

8. Where your data is stored and transferred

Our infrastructure is primarily located in AWS ap-south-1 (Mumbai, India). Some of our service providers operate outside India, and personal data may be transferred to them for the purposes described in section 7.

Transfers out of India. Section 16 of the DPDP Act permits transfer of personal data outside India except to territories restricted by the Central Government. We monitor this list and will comply with any restrictions notified.

Transfers into India from the EU, UK or elsewhere. If you are in the European Economic Area or the United Kingdom, your data is transferred to and stored in India, which has not received an adequacy decision from the European Commission or the UK government. We rely on Standard Contractual Clauses approved by the European Commission (and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where applicable), supported by encryption in transit and at rest, and access controls. You may request a copy of these safeguards by writing to info@varnamalai.com.

9. Your rights

Under the DPDP Act you have the right to:

• Access— obtain a summary of the personal data we process about you, and the identities of anyone we have shared it with
• Correction, completion and updating— have inaccurate or incomplete data fixed
• Erasure— have your personal data deleted
• Grievance redressal— raise a complaint with us and receive a response
• Nominate— appoint another person to exercise your rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity

How to exercise them:in the app under Settings → Privacy, or by writing to info@varnamalai.com. We respond within 30 days. We do not charge for this.

If you are in the EU, UK, or certain other jurisdictions, you may have additional rights — see section 12.

Withdrawing consent. You may withdraw consent at any time, as easily as you gave it. Community, gotram and horoscope data are the basis on which matches are made; if you withdraw consent for these, we can no longer provide matchmaking and your profile will be deactivated. We will make this clear before you confirm. Withdrawal does not affect processing that already took place lawfully.

Deleting your account. You can delete your account from within the app. When you do:

• your profile is removed from search and from all other users immediately
• your personal data is deleted within 30 days
• we retain the minimum required by law — transaction and accounting records for eight years under the Companies Act, 2013 and applicable tax law, and a record of your consent decisions as evidence that consent was properly obtained
• profile information already seen and separately saved by another family is outside our control

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your request, you may complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

10. How long we keep your data

11. Security

We protect your data with encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest, role-based access controls limiting which staff can see what, logging of all administrative access to profile data, phone-based authentication with one-time codes, and access to uploaded documents only through short-lived signed links.

No system is perfectly secure. If a personal data breach occurs, we will notify the Data Protection Board of India and affected users without delay, and in any event within the timelines required by the DPDP Rules, 2025. Our notice to you will describe in plain language what happened, what data was involved, what we are doing about it, and what steps you can take to protect yourself. Where users in other jurisdictions are affected, we will also meet the notification obligations that apply there.

12. If you are outside India

Our service is available worldwide. Depending on where you live, additional laws may apply.

European Economic Area and United Kingdom. If you are in the EEA or UK, the GDPR (or UK GDPR) applies to our processing of your data because we offer services to you there.

Data revealing religious belief, ethnic origin or health is “special category data” under Article 9 GDPR. We process it only on the basis of your explicit consent, which we ask for separately during onboarding. Our legal basis for other processing is performance of our contract with you (Article 6(1)(b)), your consent (Article 6(1)(a)) for marketing, our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)) for fraud prevention and product improvement, and legal obligation (Article 6(1)(c)) where applicable.

In addition to the rights in section 9, you have the right to restrict processing, to object to processing based on legitimate interests, and to data portability. You also have the right to lodge a complaint with your local supervisory authority — a list is at edpb.europa.eu, and in the UK with the Information Commissioner's Office.

Our representative in the European Union under Article 27 GDPR is:

Martin Luther Str 72, 71636 Ludwigsburg, Germany — info@varnamalai.com

United States. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under California law. If you are a California resident, you may request access to, correction of, or deletion of your personal information, and we will not discriminate against you for exercising these rights. Write to info@varnamalai.com.

Singapore, Malaysia, UAE, Australia and elsewhere. Local data protection laws may give you further rights. Write to info@varnamalai.com and we will assist.

13. Cookies and similar technologies

varnamalai.com uses cookies that are strictly necessary for the site to function, and — only with your consent where consent is required — analytics cookies that help us understand how the site is used. You can change your choice at any time via the cookie settings link in the site footer. The mobile app does not use advertising identifiers for tracking.

14. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. If we make a material change — particularly one affecting how we use community, religion or horoscope data — we will notify you in the app and by email before it takes effect, and where the change requires it, we will ask for fresh consent.

15. Contact

By using Varnamalai, you confirm that you have read and understood this Privacy Policy.