Privacy Policy
Last updated 28 October 2026 · Applies to the Pilnear app, the Pilnear Biz app for pharmacies, and this website
Pilnear is an early-stage service starting in Pune, India. This policy says plainly what we collect, why, who else sees it, how long we keep it, and how you can get a copy or have it deleted. It describes what the apps do today; we update it, and the date above, when that changes.
Who we are
Pilnear helps people in Pune find which nearby pharmacies have a medicine, and lets a pharmacy answer and hold it at its counter. Pilnear is not a pharmacy and does not sell, dispense or deliver medicines. Payment is made at the pharmacy counter; the apps do not take payments. To reach us about your information, use the address on our contact page.
What we collect
If you use the Pilnear app (buyers)
- Your sign-in: your phone number, or an email address if you sign in with an emailed link. Google Firebase sends the one-time code and keeps the sign-in record.
- Your requests: the medicine you ask for, any note you type, the search radius, and whether you attached a prescription or pack photo.
- Your position, only at the moment you use it: the app reads your position when you open the map or make a request, to work out distances. We do not track you continuously. A request stores your position rounded to about 1 km, so a pharmacy sees roughly how far away you are, not where you stand. If you tap “I’m on my way”, the pharmacy sees a distance, not coordinates.
- Prescription photos (health information): kept only while the request or order is open, then deleted automatically. Only the pharmacy you send it to can open it.
- Orders and reviews: the medicine, the price the pharmacy quoted, the pharmacy, the pickup code and the order’s status. If you rate a pharmacy, your stars and optional comment are shown to other app users with that pharmacy; they do not show your name or number.
- Notifications: a push address for your phone, so we can tell you a pharmacy replied.
- Saved patient profiles stay on your own phone and are not sent to us.
- A private copy of your closed orders (medicine name, pharmacy name, date, status and agreed price) stays on your own phone so you can still see orders older than a year. It is not sent to us, and it is removed when you delete your account or clear the app’s data.
If you use Pilnear Biz (pharmacies)
- Your phone number or email, your name, your shop’s name, address and map position, opening hours and an emergency contact number.
- Your drug licence number, the registered pharmacist’s name and state pharmacy-council registration number, your GST and FSSAI numbers if you add them, and a photo of the licence and of the shopfront. We use them to check the pharmacy is real before it is shown to buyers: a Pilnear administrator compares the licence number and the pharmacist’s registration with the state’s own records before approving.
- Your stock list and prices, your replies to requests, your order history and the reviews you receive.
- Each night we save your shop’s daily and monthly totals: how many orders were held, confirmed, dropped and picked up, the rupee value agreed at the counter, and the names of the shelf products sold. They hold no buyer name, number or location and no medicine name. We also keep the day you reached each badge, such as a pickup milestone or a league. We count how many requests your pharmacy answered and how many within five minutes, as numbers only. We count the products you gave your own photo. We keep the total of agreed prices on finished orders, as a number only.
- A push address for your phone.
On this website
No account and no advertising trackers. Our hosting provider keeps standard technical logs (such as IP address and browser type) to keep the site secure.
Why we use it
To show you pharmacies near you, pass your request to them, show you their replies, hold an order at the counter, tell you about it by notification, keep the service secure, and fix errors. We do not sell personal information, we show no advertising, and we do not use your data to build advertising profiles.
Who else handles your data
We use these providers. Each receives only what its job needs.
- Google Firebase (Authentication, database, file storage, functions, hosting, push notifications and reCAPTCHA for sign-in): stores the data above. Our database is in Google’s North America multi-region and our functions run in the United States, so your data is processed outside India.
- Sentry (crash and error reports, United States): receives technical error reports with names, numbers, cookies, headers and typed text removed.
- Place search and “your area” lookups: the app asks our own server, which asks the OpenStreetMap Nominatim service. Your position is rounded to about 100 m first, only places in India are looked up, and we store nothing from the lookup.
- Road routes: when you ask for directions, our own server sends your start point and the pharmacy’s position to an open routing service (a public Valhalla server run for OpenStreetMap by FOSSGIS). We store nothing and log no coordinates.
- Map pictures: your phone loads map tiles directly from OpenFreeMap, which therefore sees your phone’s IP address and the map area you are looking at.
- Product information for pharmacies: when a pharmacy scans a pack barcode, our server looks the product up in Open Food Facts and Wikidata. No buyer data is involved.
- The pharmacy you deal with sees your request, your rounded distance and your order. It does not see your phone number.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), tiles by OpenFreeMap and OpenMapTiles, product data from Open Food Facts (ODbL, CC BY-SA).
How long we keep it
A daily clean-up deletes records once they are this old:
| Record | Kept for |
|---|---|
| Your requests and the replies to them | 90 days |
| “I’m on my way” distance shares | 7 days |
| “Tell me when it is back” follows | 180 days |
| Closed orders | 365 days |
| Error reports | 30 days |
| Account-recovery requests | 90 days |
Prescription photos are deleted as soon as the request or order they belong to closes. Your sign-in and profile stay until you delete your account.
Your choices and rights
- Get a copy: in the app, Profile (Settings in Pilnear Biz) → Download my data.
- Delete your data: in the app, Delete my account (Close my pharmacy and delete my data in Pilnear Biz). A buyer’s requests, journey shares, follows, prescription photos and sign-in are removed. Past orders stay as the pharmacy’s own record but no longer point to you, and the written text of your reviews is removed. A pharmacy’s profile, stock, photos, reviews, badge history, daily and monthly sales totals and sign-in are removed and its name and details are no longer shown. We cannot delete while an order is still open: finish or cancel it first.
- Location: you can turn location off in your phone’s settings and search for an area by name instead.
- Notifications: turn them off in your phone’s settings.
- Correct, ask or complain: write to the address on our contact page. We aim to reply within 30 days. You may also complain to the Data Protection Board of India once it is operating.
Children
Pilnear is meant for adults. If you are under 18, use it with a parent or guardian, who is responsible for any prescription photo that is shared.
Security
Data travels over encrypted connections, access is limited by sign-in and by rules on the database, and administrators sign in with their own accounts. No system is perfectly secure; if a breach affects you we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Changes
If this policy changes we update the date at the top of this page, and tell app users if the change is important.