Privacy Policy

1. Who this policy covers

This policy applies to:

• visitors browsing the public website;
• prospective members who submit a membership application;
• guests who register for a chapter meeting or event;
• active members with a directory profile and, if granted, a member portal login; and
• BWF chapter and central administrators who use the internal admin system.

2. Information we collect

2.1 Information you give us directly

• Membership applications: full name, phone number, email, company name, designation, years in business, how you heard about BWF, and any other company information you choose to share.
• Visitor / event / meeting registrations: name, phone number, email, company, business category, chapter, and (if applicable) which member referred you.
• Member directory profile: your business description, services, specialisations, unique selling points, years in business, areas served, certifications, major projects, clientele, and any contact details, social links, photo, brochure, or video you or a chapter admin choose to publish to your public profile.
• Ask BWF chatbot leads: if you ask our chatbot to have someone follow up with you, we collect your name, phone number, optional email, and what you're looking for, along with the chat transcript.
• Testimonials and feedback you submit through the website.
• Login credentials: if you're a member with portal access or a BWF administrator, your email and password (stored hashed, never in plain text), and one-time passcodes we email you to verify sign-in.

2.2 Information collected automatically

• Standard web analytics via Google Analytics — page views, referring pages, approximate location, device and browser type, and similar usage data. See “Cookies” below.
• Security and abuse-prevention data: IP address and request metadata used to rate-limit form submissions, plus an internal audit log of actions BWF administrators take in the system (not visitor-facing).

2.3 What we don't collect

We don't currently process online payments through this website — membership fees are collected outside the platform. If online payment is enabled here in future, this section will be updated to describe what the payment processor collects. Clicking our WhatsApp button opens a chat directly on your own device; we record only that the click happened (for analytics), never the content of anything you say to us on WhatsApp — that's covered by WhatsApp/Meta's own privacy policy, not this one.

3. How we use your information

• To operate the member directory and chapter system, including enforcing BWF's one-member-per-business-category-per-chapter rule.
• To review and process membership applications, and to contact you about their status.
• To manage event and meeting registrations, and to follow up with visitors about their interest in joining.
• To operate member login accounts, including the profile-edit approval workflow.
• To respond to feedback, testimonials, and chatbot leads.
• To send transactional emails — application status updates, sign-in passcodes, password resets, meeting/event confirmations — and, for internal recipients, scheduled admin reports.
• To understand site usage and improve the website, using aggregated analytics.
• To detect and prevent abuse of forms and other platform features.
• To comply with legal obligations and enforce our Terms & Conditions.

4. Legal basis for processing

Where India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 applies, we rely on: your consent (chatbot leads, analytics cookies); performance of a request you made to us (processing a membership application or event registration); and our legitimate interests (site security, abuse prevention, and running the member directory you asked to be listed in).

5. Cookies and similar technologies

Google Analytics sets cookies to measure site usage. We don't currently use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies, so a separate cookie-consent banner isn't required at this time. We'll revisit this if that changes.

6. Who we share information with

We don't sell personal data. We share it only with:

• Service providers who process data on our behalf and only for the purpose we specify: Neon (database hosting), Vercel (application hosting), Resend (transactional email delivery), OpenAI (the AI models that power the Ask BWF chatbot — your chatbot messages are sent to OpenAI to generate a reply), Google (Analytics), and Cloudflare R2 (photo/brochure/video storage).
• Other site visitors, if you're listed in the public member directory — see “Member directory is public” below.
• Authorities, where disclosure is required by law.

7. Member directory is public

If you're an active member, the fields on your profile that BWF or you publish — business description, services, specialisations, and any contact details, social links, or media you choose to include — are visible to anyone visiting the website, not only signed-in members. Don't include anything you don't want public. Any edit you submit yourself goes through chapter-admin approval before it's published.

8. Ask BWF chatbot

Answers are generated by an AI model (via OpenAI) drawing on BWF's own public content, not by a person in real time. Conversation transcripts are stored for quality and follow-up purposes. If you leave contact details as a “lead,” a BWF administrator will follow up with you directly.

9. Data retention

We keep membership, visitor, and chatbot-lead records for as long as needed for the purpose they were collected for, and for a further 6 months to 1 year after that purpose ends (for example, after a membership lapses or a visitor's enquiry goes cold), for record-keeping and legal purposes.

10. Data security

Passwords are stored hashed, sign-in for member and admin accounts uses one-time-passcode verification, and access to the admin system is role-based — each admin role can only reach the data and chapters it needs. Form submissions are rate-limited, and administrator actions are logged for audit purposes.

11. Your rights

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, you may request access to, correction of, or erasure of your personal data, and may withdraw consent where our processing relies on it. Contact our Grievance Officer using the details below.

Grievance Officer: Nagappan · buildersworldforum7@gmail.com · +91 99401 39493

12. Children's privacy

This website is a business platform and isn't directed at, and doesn't knowingly collect data from, anyone under 18.

13. International data transfers

Some of our service providers (including our hosting and AI providers) may process or store data outside India. By using this website, you consent to this transfer as described in this policy.

14. Changes to this policy

We'll update the “last updated” date above whenever this policy changes, and give reasonably prominent notice of any material change.

15. Contact us

buildersworldforum@gmail.com · +91 94441 31213
Old No. 59, 3rd Floor, Arcot Road, Kodambakkam, Chennai - 600024
Registered as: Builders World Forum, Ground Floor, Plot No. 204, Makizhmathi 22nd Street, Omsakthi Kanopus, Narayanapuram, Avadi, Chennai, Tiruvallur District, Tamil Nadu 600077