Privacy Policy

Last Updated: September 2026 

Friendly Elephant is a service operated by Elephorium LLP, a limited liability partnership registered in India (“Elephorium,” “Friendly Elephant,” “we,” “our,” or “us”).

We believe meaningful connection should not require giving up control over your personal information. This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, why we use it, who we may share it with, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights available to you.

This Privacy Policy applies to the Friendly Elephant mobile application, friendlyelephant.com, our waitlists, events, communications, Ira features, and other services that link to this Policy (collectively, the “Services”).

 

1. Who We Are

Legal Entity: Elephorium LLP
Brand: Friendly Elephant
Registered Office: 9-5-1/VM/115, Ibrahimbagh, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Privacy Contact: ira@friendlyelephant.com

For purposes of applicable privacy law, Elephorium LLP is the entity responsible for determining how and why your personal information is processed.

Where the European Union or UK GDPR applies, Elephorium LLP acts as the data controller.

Where India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (“DPDP Act”) applies, Elephorium LLP acts as the Data Fiduciary.

 

2. Who May Use Friendly Elephant

Friendly Elephant is intended only for people 18 years of age or older.

You may not create an account or use the Services if you are under 18.

We use age information as part of our registration process to help enforce this requirement. If we learn that an account belongs to someone under 18, we may suspend or delete the account and associated personal information, subject to applicable law.

 

3. Information We Collect

The information we collect depends on how you interact with Friendly Elephant and which features you use.

A. Account and Contact Information

We may collect:

• First name or display name
• Email address
• Login and authentication information
• Communication preferences

B. Age and Demographic Information

To support age eligibility, matching, and community design, we may collect:

• Birth month and year
• Age calculated from your birth month and year
• Gender identity or gender selection that you choose to provide
• City or general location preference

For our core onboarding experience, we do not require your exact birth date.

C. Interests, Preferences, and Onboarding Responses

We may collect information you provide about:

• Hobbies and interests
• Conversation preferences
• Kind, Curious, and Brave onboarding responses
• Event or dinner preferences
• Availability
• General social preferences
• Other information you voluntarily provide to personalize your experience

We use this information to help personalize Friendly Elephant and, where applicable, form or recommend groups.

D. Profile and Social Information

Depending on the features available to you, we may collect:

• Profile information
• Profile photographs or other media you choose to upload
• Event registrations
• Dinner or group assignments
• Attendance information
• Connections or interactions with other members
• Blocks and reports
• Safety-related information
• Compliments, feedback, or other information submitted about or by members

If another member submits a safety report, feedback, or other information concerning you, that information may also become part of our records.

E. Reflections, Practice, and Ira

If you use reflection, practice, journaling, or Ira features, we may process information you voluntarily provide through those experiences.

This may include:

• Reflection responses
• Practice activity and progress
• Feedback about experiences
• Messages or prompts sent to Ira
• Feedback about AI-generated responses

These features are intended to support reflection, learning, and connection. They are not medical, psychological, therapeutic, or crisis services.

How Ira works.
Ira is powered by a third-party artificial intelligence provider, Anthropic. When you send a message to Ira, that message and the earlier messages in the same conversation are transmitted to Anthropic to generate a response.

We do not currently store your Ira conversations. Messages exist only for the duration of the conversation in the app and are not retained on our servers after you leave the screen. If we begin storing conversation history in future, we will update this Policy and provide notice before that change takes effect.

Please avoid including highly sensitive personal information in reflections or AI conversations unless it is necessary for the feature you are intentionally using.

 

 

 

F. Event Information

If you register for an in-person dinner or other event, we may collect information such as:

• Event registration
• Table or group assignment
• Attendance, cancellation, or no-show status
• Venue information associated with your booking
• Event feedback and reflections
• Information necessary to administer refunds or credits

G. Payment and Transaction Information

When paid services become available, payments may be processed by Apple, Google, a payment processor, or another authorized payment provider.

We may receive transaction-related information such as:

• Purchase amount
• Transaction identifier
• Purchase status
• Subscription status
• Refund information

We do not intend to store your full payment-card number or card security code ourselves where payment is handled by a third-party payment provider.

H. Device, Usage, and Technical Information

When you use our Services, we or our service providers may collect information such as:

• IP address
• Device and operating-system type
• App version
• Browser type
• Language and time zone
• Session information
• Crash and diagnostic information
• Security and authentication logs
• Push-notification token, if notifications are enabled
• General usage information about how features are accessed and used

We use this information to operate, secure, debug, and improve Friendly Elephant.

I. Device Permissions

Friendly Elephant will request access to device features only when relevant to a feature you choose to use.

For example, a future feature may request access to photos, camera, notifications, or location.

Where permission is required, we will explain the purpose and request permission through the operating system or an appropriate in-app disclosure.

Declining an optional permission will not prevent access to unrelated features.

Our core city-selection functionality does not require precise GPS location.

4. How We Obtain Information

We may receive personal information:

• Directly from you
• Automatically from your device when you use the Services
• From other Friendly Elephant users, such as through reports or feedback
• From service providers acting on our behalf
• From event or venue partners where necessary to provide an event
• From Apple, Google, or payment providers in connection with purchases
• From other sources when you authorize the transfer

We do not purchase personal profiles for the purpose of secretly profiling Friendly Elephant members.

5. How We Use Personal Information

We may use personal information to:

Provide Friendly Elephant

This includes:

• Creating and securing your account
• Verifying eligibility
• Operating app features
• Providing practice and reflection experiences
• Providing Ira features
• Managing dinners and other events
• Communicating with you about your account or participation

Match and Personalize

We may use information such as your:

• Age or age range
• City
• Interests and hobbies
• Onboarding responses
• Event preferences and availability

to recommend experiences, groups, content, or other features.

Keep the Community Safe

We may process information to:

• Prevent fraud and abuse
• Investigate reports
• Enforce our Terms and Community Standards
• Block abusive activity
• Protect users, employees, venues, and the public
• Comply with legal or safety obligations

Improve the Services

We may use information to:

• Understand which features are useful
• Diagnose technical problems
• Conduct product research
• Improve matching and recommendations
• Measure performance
• Develop new features

Where practical, we use aggregated or de-identified information for analytics and product research.

Communicate With You

We may send:

• Account and security notices
• Event information
• Service announcements
• Policy updates
• Customer-support responses
• Marketing communications where permitted

You may unsubscribe from promotional email communications at any time. Service-related messages that are necessary to operate your account may continue.

Comply With Law

We may process information when reasonably necessary to:

• Meet legal obligations
• Respond to lawful governmental or judicial requests
• Establish, exercise, or defend legal claims
• Protect legal rights
• Investigate suspected illegal activity

6. Legal Bases for Processing

The legal basis we rely on depends on the information, purpose, and law that applies to you.

Where the GDPR or UK GDPR applies, our legal bases may include:

Performance of a contract: when processing is necessary to provide the Services you request, administer your account, manage an event, or provide another agreed service.

Consent: where you choose optional features, marketing, certain device permissions, cookies, certain sensitive-data processing, or third-party AI processing for which consent is required.

Legitimate interests: where necessary for reasonable business interests such as securing the Services, preventing abuse, improving our product, understanding usage, and operating a safe community, provided those interests are not overridden by your rights and freedoms.

Legal obligations: where processing is necessary to comply with law.

Protection of vital interests or other lawful bases: where permitted and appropriate in unusual safety circumstances.

Where India’s DPDP Act applies, we process personal data for lawful purposes based on consent or other processing permitted by applicable law.

You may withdraw consent at any time where consent is the basis for processing. Withdrawal does not affect processing that was lawful before withdrawal.

7. Matching and Automated Processing

Friendly Elephant may use automated rules or algorithms to help recommend or create groups, events, content, or experiences.

Depending on the feature, those systems may consider factors such as:

• Age or age range
• City
• Hobbies and interests
• Onboarding responses
• Availability
• Prior participation
• Safety-related eligibility

Automated matching is intended to organize and personalize the Friendly Elephant experience. It is not intended to make decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.

We may adjust our matching methods as the product develops.

Where applicable law gives you rights relating to automated decision-making, you may contact us using the information below.

8. When We Share Personal Information

We do not sell or rent your personal information.

As of the Last Updated date, we do not use personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising.

We may share information in the following circumstances.

Other Friendly Elephant Members

Some information must be shared to make social experiences possible.

For example, members assigned to the same dinner or group may see limited profile information such as your first name and other information intentionally made visible for that experience.

We do not make your raw onboarding responses, private reflections, or private Ira conversations visible to other members unless you intentionally choose to share them.

Service Providers

We use companies that provide infrastructure and operational services on our behalf.

Our core technical providers may include:

• Supabase for services such as authentication, database, and backend infrastructure
• Cloud-hosting and storage providers
• Email and communication providers
• Push-notification providers
• Analytics and crash-reporting providers, if enabled
• Customer-support providers
• Payment processors
• Security and fraud-prevention providers

These providers may process information only as necessary to provide their services to us and subject to appropriate contractual and security obligations.

We evaluate third-party providers and expect them to provide protections consistent with applicable law and our obligations to users.

Artificial Intelligence Providers

Ira is powered by Anthropic. The messages in your conversation are transmitted to Anthropic to generate a response.

We do not authorize AI providers to use Friendly Elephant user information for unrelated advertising, and we do not permit them to use it to train their models.

If we add or change AI providers, we will update this Policy.

Event and Venue Partners

We may provide a venue or event partner with the minimum information reasonably necessary to administer a reservation, event, or safety issue.

We do not provide venues with your private reflections or other unrelated profile information.

Apple, Google, and Payment Providers

Information necessary for purchases, subscriptions, refunds, app distribution, or account-related platform services may be processed by the applicable platform or payment provider under its own terms and privacy practices.

Legal, Safety, and Enforcement Purposes

We may disclose information where we reasonably believe disclosure is required by law or necessary to:

• Respond to a valid legal process
• Investigate fraud or illegal activity
• Protect someone’s safety
• Enforce our Terms
• Protect the rights and property of Elephorium LLP, our users, or others

Corporate Transactions

If Elephorium LLP is involved in a merger, financing, acquisition, restructuring, sale of assets, or similar transaction, information may be disclosed as part of that transaction subject to appropriate safeguards.

With Your Direction or Consent

We may share information when you ask us to or otherwise give permission.

9. Data Retention

We keep personal information only for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Policy, including providing the Services, maintaining community safety, meeting legal obligations, resolving disputes, and enforcing agreements.

The retention period varies according to the type of information and why we hold it.

Generally:

• Account information is retained while your account remains active.
• Onboarding and preference information is retained while needed to provide personalization or matching.
• Event and transaction records may be retained for legitimate accounting, legal, fraud-prevention, or dispute-resolution requirements.
• Safety, moderation, blocking, or abuse records may be retained where reasonably necessary to protect users and prevent repeat abuse.
• Marketing information is retained until you unsubscribe or we no longer need it.
• Information required by law may be retained for the legally required period.

When information is no longer necessary, we delete or de-identify it.

Residual copies may remain temporarily in encrypted backups until those backups are overwritten according to our normal backup cycles.

10. Account and Data Deletion

If Friendly Elephant allows you to create an account, you may request deletion of that account and associated personal information.

You will be able to initiate account deletion:

In the app: Profile -> Settings → Delete Account

On the web: https://friendlyelephant.com/delete-account/

By contacting us: ira@friendlyelephant.com

Deletion cannot be undone. There is no grace period and no way to recover a deleted account.

What is deleted. Your profile and name, your onboarding answers, your practice history, streak and badges, any upcoming dinner bookings, your notification settings, and your sign-in credentials.

Your email address is released, and you may use it to sign up again as a completely new account with no history.

What is retained. Some records involve other members, and removing them would take something away from someone else. These are kept with your name removed:

• Compliments you gave other members are kept for those members
• Past dinners keep an anonymous record that a seat was taken
• Restaurant and evening ratings are kept

Safety records — reports involving you, and blocks other members have placed on you — are retained for as long as they are needed to protect other members.

Upon a valid deletion request, we will delete or de-identify personal information associated with the account unless we must retain specific information for a legitimate legal reason, such as:

• Fraud or abuse prevention
• Safety investigations
• Financial or tax records
• Legal claims
• Compliance with law

Where information must be retained, we will limit its use to the purpose requiring retention.

11. Your Privacy Rights

Privacy rights vary depending on where you live.

We will provide a reasonable way for users to request access, correction, deletion, or other applicable privacy rights even where a particular statutory privacy regime does not yet apply to Elephorium LLP.

To submit a request, contact ira@friendlyelephant.com.

We may need to verify your identity before fulfilling a request.

European Economic Area

Where the EU GDPR applies, you may have the right to:

• Access your personal data
• Correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Request deletion
• Restrict certain processing
• Object to certain processing
• Receive certain information in a portable format
• Withdraw consent
• Object to direct marketing
• Exercise applicable rights concerning automated decision-making
• Lodge a complaint with the data-protection authority in your country

These rights may be subject to lawful exceptions.

United Kingdom

Where UK data-protection law applies, you may have corresponding rights of access, correction, erasure, restriction, objection, portability, withdrawal of consent, and complaint to the UK Information Commissioner’s Office.

India

Where the DPDP Act applies, you may have rights including:

• Access to information about the processing of your personal data
• Correction, completion, and updating of personal data
• Erasure where applicable
• Withdrawal of consent
• Grievance redressal
• Nomination of another individual to exercise applicable rights in circumstances permitted by law

United States

Depending on your state and whether the relevant law applies to Elephorium LLP, you may have rights to:

• Confirm whether we process your personal information
• Access or obtain a copy of personal information
• Correct inaccurate information
• Delete personal information
• Obtain portable data
• Opt out of the sale of personal information
• Opt out of sharing for cross-context behavioral advertising or targeted advertising
• Limit certain uses of sensitive personal information
• Opt out of certain qualifying profiling or automated decision-making
• Appeal certain privacy-request decisions
• Exercise your rights without unlawful discrimination

We do not currently sell personal information or use it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

If our practices change, we will update this Policy and provide legally required privacy controls, including recognition of qualifying opt-out preference signals where required.

12. Cookies and Similar Technologies

Our website may use cookies and similar technologies.

We may use:

Essential technologies that are necessary for security, navigation, preferences, and operation of the website.

Analytics or measurement technologies to understand website usage and improve our Services.

Where applicable law requires consent before placing non-essential cookies or similar technologies, we will request that consent before activating them.

You may adjust available cookie preferences through our cookie controls or your browser.

Where legally required, we honor supported browser-based privacy preference signals.

13. International Data Transfers

Friendly Elephant is operated by Elephorium LLP in India, while our users and service providers may be located in other countries.

As a result, personal information may be processed outside the country where you live.

Where required, we use legally recognized safeguards for international transfers, which may include contractual protections such as European Commission Standard Contractual Clauses, UK-approved transfer mechanisms, adequacy decisions, or other lawful mechanisms.

We also take reasonable steps to ensure service providers protect personal information consistently with applicable law.

14. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational safeguards designed to protect personal information.

These may include:

• Access controls
• Authentication safeguards
• Encryption in transit
• Secure cloud infrastructure
• Role-based access restrictions
• Logging and monitoring
• Security updates
• Data minimization
• Internal access limitations

No digital service can guarantee absolute security.

If you believe your account or personal information may have been compromised, please contact us promptly.

15. Children and Teenagers

Friendly Elephant is an adult-only service.

The Services are not directed to children or teenagers under 18, and people under 18 may not create an account.

We do not knowingly allow children to participate in Friendly Elephant social matching or events.

If we learn that a person under 18 has provided personal information in violation of our age requirement, we will take appropriate steps, which may include deleting the account and information.

Parents, guardians, or others who believe a minor is using the Services may contact us at ira@friendlyelephant.com.

16. Marketing

We may send promotional communications if you request them or where otherwise permitted by law.

You may unsubscribe using the link in a marketing email or by contacting us.

We will continue to send essential service messages where reasonably necessary to operate your account.

We do not sell our marketing lists.

17. Third-Party Websites and Services

Friendly Elephant may contain links to restaurants, venues, social networks, app stores, payment services, or other third-party services.

Those services operate independently and may have their own privacy practices.

This Policy governs Elephorium LLP’s processing of personal information and does not automatically apply to an independent third party’s processing.

18. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy as our Services, technology, providers, or legal obligations change.

If a change materially affects how we use personal information, we will provide additional notice where appropriate or legally required.

If a new use requires consent, we will request that consent before beginning the new processing.

The date at the top of this Policy identifies the latest version.

19. Contact Us and Grievances

Questions, privacy requests, and grievances may be sent to:

Elephorium LLP
Operating the Friendly Elephant service
9-5-1/VM/115, Ibrahimbagh, Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Hyderabad, Telangana, India

Email: ira@friendlyelephant.com

We will acknowledge and respond to privacy grievances within the time required by applicable law.