Privacy Policy

Counseld ("we," "us," "our") is operated by Modest Minds Private Limited. This Privacy Policy explains what data Counseld collects, how it is used, and the rights you and your school have over it. It applies to the Counseld web application and this website.

Who controls the data

Counseld is a tool used by school counsellors and the schools that employ them. The counsellor and their school are the data controllers under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP), 2023 — they determine what student data is entered and are responsible for obtaining any parental or guardian consent required. Counseld acts as a data processor, handling data only to provide the service. Counseld gives counsellors an optional way to record, at intake, that consent was obtained and by whom (parent, guardian, or the student directly if 18+).

What we collect

Account information (name, email, school) for the counsellor using Counseld; student profile and case information the counsellor chooses to enter; session notes the counsellor records, types or uploads (including transcripts of voice notes and text read from photos of handwritten notes); and usage data needed to operate and improve the service.

We do not store session audio. Recordings are transcribed and the audio file is discarded immediately after — it is never saved to our servers.

Website analytics and cookies

This website (counseld.in) uses Google Analytics, a service provided by Google, to understand how visitors find and use the site. It sets cookies in your browser (named _ga and _ga_5QF8ZXXZYR, kept for up to two years) and collects the pages you view, the site that referred you, your approximate location (city or country), your device and browser type, and interactions such as scrolling and link clicks. Your IP address is sent to Google to derive the approximate location but is not stored in our analytics reports. This information is processed by Google, which may do so outside India. We use it only in aggregate and do not use it to identify you.

Google Analytics runs only on this website. It is not loaded in the Counseld web application (app.counseld.in), so no student, case, or session data is ever sent to it. You can opt out by blocking cookies in your browser or by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on.

When you arrive from a link with campaign information, or from another website, we remember that source in your browser. If you then sign up, we save it with your account so we can see which channels help counsellors find us. It is not shared with anyone else.

Free guide downloads

When you download a free guide (for example the First-Year School Counsellor Starter Guide), we ask for your name, email address and role, and optionally your school and city, and whether you want occasional emails about new free resources. For this information Counseld (Modest Minds Private Limited) is the data controller. We use it to email you the download link and, only if you ticked the box, to send occasional updates; you can stop those at any time by replying to any email or writing to support@counseld.in.

It is stored securely with our service providers, together with a log of when the download link was used. We use it internally to send your download and to curate better resources, and we email you updates only if you ticked the box. To limit abuse, your IP address is turned into a one-way code used only to count requests per hour; the address itself is never stored. We do not sell it or share it with anyone else. To see or delete what we hold about you, email support@counseld.in and we will act within 30 days. The same applies to the optional Suggest a resource form on our resources page: we keep your idea, and your name, role and email only if you give them, to plan new resources and to tell you when yours is ready.

How AI is used

We use AI to transcribe voice notes, read photos of handwritten notes you upload, turn notes into structured session notes, and draft summaries and reports. This is done by the following providers, which process the data only to return the result to us:

• Sarvam AI — transcribes voice recordings.
• Anthropic (Claude) — structures notes, reads uploaded note photos, and drafts summaries and reports.
• OpenAI — used only as a backup for the same tasks if Anthropic is unavailable.

Before a transcript or typed note is sent to be structured, we remove the student's name (as recorded in their profile) along with phone numbers and email addresses. Voice recordings and photos cannot be redacted this way, so avoid showing a student's full name in photos you upload. Some of this processing may take place outside India. None of the resulting clinical content is written to our system logs. Your data is never used to train public AI models.

Access controls

Only the counsellor who created a student record can see it. This is enforced at the database level with row-level security — one counsellor can never read, edit, or export another counsellor's students, even by accident. There is no shared pool of student records. Viewing a session note, exporting a summary, or revealing a confidential concern is recorded in an internal audit trail, keyed to the student's anonymous code rather than their name.

Storage, security and retention

Data is encrypted in transit (HTTPS) and at rest, hosted on managed cloud infrastructure (PostgreSQL via Supabase).

When a counsellor deletes a student's record, the associated data is permanently and irreversibly removed within 14 days. If a paid plan ends, the account moves to the Free plan and nothing is deleted because the plan ended. On the Free plan, records stay until the counsellor deletes them or asks for the account to be deleted, or until the account has gone 60 days without anyone signing in or using the app. Those 60 days count from the last sign-in or use of the app, or from the day a paid plan, a trial or the first 14 days ended, whichever is later. Before an inactive Free account’s student records, notes and files are deleted, we email the account address twice with the deletion date: on day 46 and again 3 days before the date (day 57). Deletion is never sooner than 14 days after the first email, and a deletion that would fall between 15 April and 15 June (school summer holidays) is moved to 16 June. Signing in before that date keeps everything. The account and login stay, so the counsellor can carry on using the Free plan. Paid accounts are never deleted for inactivity. Deleting your account removes everything, including your login, 14 days after you ask. There is no hidden long-term retention.

We do not sell your data

Counseld is not a data broker. We do not sell, rent, or share student data with advertisers or any other third parties, beyond the service providers named above that process it on our behalf.

Your rights

Counsellors can export or delete their data at any time from within the app. Schools or counsellors seeking a formal data processing agreement, or with questions about a specific student's data, can contact us directly.

Changes to this policy

We'll update the "last updated" date above if this policy changes materially, and will notify active subscribers by email.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data: support@counseld.in