Privacy at
Karky Academy

What this page covers

This page covers academy.karky.in only.

The Thambaa Tamil Labs application, which children use in school, is a different service and has its own privacy policy. So does the Payil site. If you are looking for what happens to a child’s learning data inside the labs, that is the Thambaa policy, not this one.

What we ask you for

Only what you type into one of our forms, and only when you choose to write to us.

Depending on which form you use, that may be your name, email address, phone number, your school or organisation, your city, roughly how many students you have, which of our products you are interested in, the territory you are asking about, and whatever you write in the message box.

We ask for these so we can answer you properly — a proposal for a school needs to know the grades, and a franchise conversation cannot start without knowing the territory. Nothing is collected quietly in the background.

Every form has a tick box. We keep a record of the exact wording you agreed to and the date, so what you consented to is never in dispute.

Where it goes

Your enquiry goes into HubSpot, the system we use to make sure nothing is missed. HubSpot stores it on servers in the United States, which means your information leaves India. We use it only to reply to you and to keep track of the conversation. We do not sell it, rent it, or pass it to anyone else for their own purposes.

Counting visits, without cookies

We use Google Analytics to see how many pages are opened on this site and which ones. We run it in a mode that writes no cookies at all.

That is not a detail. Google Analytics, as it is normally installed, stores two files on your device that last two years and let a site recognise you when you come back. We have that switched off. Nothing is written to your browser, nothing is read from it, and there is nothing for you to accept, refuse or clear afterwards.

What we can see: that a page was opened, which page it was, which site or search you arrived from, roughly which country you were in, and whether you were on a phone or a computer.

What we cannot see: who you are, whether you have been here before, whether two pages were opened by the same person, or anything you do on any other website. We accept that our own numbers are rougher for it — without a cookie we cannot tell one visitor reading five pages from five visitors reading one each. That is a fair price and we would rather pay it than ask you to carry a tracker.

Your name, email address and anything else you type into a form are never sent to Google. Those go to HubSpot, as described above, and nowhere else.

How long we keep it

One year, then we delete it. If you write to us and nothing comes of it, your details do not sit in our system indefinitely. After twelve months they are removed.

If your enquiry becomes an agreement — a school partnership, a franchise — the records of that agreement are kept under the agreement itself, for as long as it runs and for as long afterwards as Indian tax and company law require. That is a separate thing from an enquiry, and the agreement says so.

Photographs of children on this site

Some pages show photographs of children using Thambaa Tamil Labs in their schools.

These come from our partner schools. The school sends them to us and gives us its consent to publish them, and the school holds the consent of the children’s parents — which is the right way round, because the school is the one with the relationship to the family.

We never name a child in a caption, and we do not name a school beside an individual photograph. A photograph shows an activity, not a person.

If you are a parent or a school and you would like a photograph removed, write to raj@karky.in and we will take it down. You do not have to give a reason and we will not ask for one.

The Annual Winners page

Each year we publish a roll of honour: the students, teachers and schools who did the most in Thambaa Tamil Labs.

For students we publish a first name, their school and their rank — and nothing else. Never a surname, never a photograph, never their age, class or section, and never a score. Teachers and schools are named in full.

We do this because recognising effort in public is part of what makes a child want to come back to it, and because a school being named is a credit to the school. We publish all of it with the school’s consent, and that includes naming the teachers.

If you are a parent, a teacher or a school and you would rather not appear, write to raj@karky.in and we will remove the entry. Again, no reason needed.

Your rights

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 you may:

• Ask what we hold about you, and get a copy
• Ask us to correct anything wrong or out of date
• Ask us to delete it
• Withdraw your consent at any time, as easily as you gave it
• Complain — to us first, and then to the Data Protection Board of India
• Nominate someone to exercise these rights for you if you are unable to

To do any of these, write to raj@karky.in. We will respond within 10 business days. If you write to any other address at Karky Academy about your information, it will be passed to Mr. Rajapandian — you will not be sent round in a circle.

If a child’s information is involved

If you are a parent or guardian and you want to see, correct or remove anything on this site that relates to your child, write to raj@karky.in. We will act on it, and we will not require you to explain yourself. You may also go through your child’s school if that is easier — they can reach us directly.

If you are outside India

Our home law is the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, and it is the law this page is written to. But learners enrol with us from Singapore, the United States, New Zealand, the Gulf and elsewhere, and their information deserves the protection of the place they live in, not only the place we sit in.

So we hold ourselves to the following as well, and we will honour a request made under any of them:

• COPPA (United States) — we do not knowingly collect personal information from a child under 13 through this website. Our forms are written for adults: a parent, a teacher or a school. Where a child’s information reaches us it comes from their school or their parent, never from the child
• FERPA (United States) — where we work with an American school, learning records stay the school’s records. We handle them under the school’s direction and we do not use them for anything the school has not asked for
• PIPEDA (Canada) — consent before collection, use limited to the purpose we named, and access to what we hold on request
• Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (Singapore)
• Personal Data Protection Act 2010 (Malaysia)

In practice these ask for much the same things, and they are things we already do: collect little, say why, keep it briefly, never sell it, and give it back or delete it when you ask. The rights listed above are available to you wherever you are. You do not need to tell us which law you are writing under, and we will not ask you to prove you are entitled to any of it.

Two things to be plain about. Our systems are in India and the United States, so writing to us means your information travels. That is said in Where it goes above and it is true wherever you live. And the visit counting described in Counting visits, without cookies is done by Google, whose servers are outside India too — which is why we run it with storage switched off and send it nothing you have typed.

Grievance Officer

Mr. Rajapandian
Data Protection & Grievance Officer, Karky Tamil Academy LLP
102 6th Cross Street, Trustpuram, Kodambakkam, Chennai 600024, Tamil Nadu, India
raj@karky.in · +91 97893 08666

Changes to this page

If we change how any of this works, we will change this page and update the date at the top. If the change is significant and we hold your email address, we will tell you.