Terms & Conditions

Agreement

These Terms and Conditions, along with the Privacy Policy or other terms (“Terms”), constitute a binding agreement by and between G Hari Prakash (“Website Owner” or “we” or “us” or “our”) and you (“you” or “your”) and relate to your use of our website, goods (as applicable) or services (as applicable) (collectively, “Services”).

By using our website and availing the Services, you agree that you have read and accepted these Terms (including the Privacy Policy). We reserve the right to modify these Terms at any time and without assigning any reason. It is your responsibility to periodically review these Terms to stay informed of updates.

Terms of use

The use of this website or availing of our Services is subject to the following terms of use:

• To access and use the Services, you agree to provide true, accurate and complete information to us during and after registration, and you shall be responsible for all acts done through the use of your registered account.
• Neither we nor any third parties provide any warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy, timeliness, performance, completeness or suitability of the information and materials offered on this website or through the Services, for any specific purpose. You acknowledge that such information and materials may contain inaccuracies or errors and we expressly exclude liability for any such inaccuracies or errors to the fullest extent permitted by law.
• Your use of our Services and the website is solely at your own risk and discretion. You are required to independently assess and ensure that the Services meet your requirements.
• The contents of the website and the Services are proprietary to us and you will not have any authority to claim any intellectual property rights, title, or interest in its contents.
• You acknowledge that unauthorised use of the website or the Services may lead to action against you as per these Terms or applicable laws.
• You agree to pay us the charges associated with availing the Services.
• You agree not to use the website or the Services for any purpose that is unlawful, illegal or forbidden by these Terms, or Indian or local laws that might apply to you.
• You agree and acknowledge that the website and the Services may contain links to other third party websites. On accessing these links, you will be governed by the terms of use, privacy policy and such other policies of such third party websites.
• You understand that upon initiating a transaction for availing the Services you are entering into a legally binding and enforceable contract with us for the Services.
• Notwithstanding anything contained in these Terms, the parties shall not be liable for any failure to perform an obligation under these Terms if performance is prevented or delayed by a force majeure event.

Your data lives in your browser

By default your projects, documents, codes and memos are stored in your own browser, on your own device, and never reach us. This is deliberate: it is what lets you work with sensitive research data without sending it anywhere.

It also means that if you clear your browser data, uninstall your browser, or lose the device, your projects are gone and we cannot recover them — we hold no copy. Please export your work regularly; Vichara provides Export for exactly this purpose. Projects you choose to save to the cloud are stored on our servers and are covered by our Privacy Policy.

Research data and ethics

You decide what data you put into Vichara, and you remain responsible for it. By uploading research data you confirm that you hold the ethical approvals and participant consents your research requires, and that you are permitted to process that data in the way you are using Vichara — including cloud storage, team sharing and the AI assistant, where you choose to use them.

We do not review your data for compliance and cannot do so. Responsibility for ethical and legal compliance rests with you and your institution.

The AI assistant

Manan, the project assistant, is optional; every part of Vichara works without it. It suggests, and you decide: nothing it proposes is written into your data without your approval, and every suggestion goes to the Review queue for you to accept or reject individually.

Passages you submit to Manan are processed by a third-party language-model provider. Names recorded in your document attributes are masked before sending and restored in the reply; this reduces risk but is not anonymisation, and a name typed only in the middle of a transcript cannot be caught this way. Please satisfy yourself that your ethics approval covers this before using it.

Manan can be wrong. Vichara measures its agreement with your own coding and shows you the result. Every analytical judgement, and responsibility for anything you publish, remains yours.

Transcription

The transcription workspace runs in your browser: you can load or record audio, play it back, type a transcript, label speakers and export the result. Automatic speech-to-text requires a separate local speech engine running on your own machine, and we make no commitment that it is available to you.

Accounts

Keep your password confidential; you are responsible for activity under your account. One account is for one person. To give colleagues access to a project, use the sharing feature, so that each person works under their own identity — this also matters for your analysis, because agreement between coders cannot be measured if two people code under one login.

Governing law

These Terms, and any dispute or claim relating to them or their enforceability, shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of India. All disputes arising out of or in connection with these Terms shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in Bengaluru, Karnataka.

Contact

All concerns or communications relating to these Terms must be sent to info@vicharaqda.in. Our full contact details are on the Contact Us page.