Terms of Use

Who we are, and agreeing

1. Vanagrha (the app at app.vanagrha.in) is run by AG OPC, registered at Life Science Education Trust, 57/1, Agrahara, Yelahanka, Kogilu, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560064 (“we”, “us”).
2. You agree to these Terms, and to our Community Guidelines, which form part of them, by ticking to accept them when you sign up. Our Privacy Policy is separate: you read it and give your consent to it as its own step. If you do not agree to these Terms, please do not use Vanagrha.
3. You must be 18 or older. You confirm this with a separate tick when you sign up, and we record it.
4. Vanagrha is offered to people in India.
5. Vanagrha is free. Nothing is sold in the app, and no payment is taken in the app.

Your account

1. You sign in with Google or with a link we email you. You choose a public handle.
2. One account per person. Keep access to your email and Google account safe: what happens in your account is your responsibility. You can turn on two-step sign-in in Settings.
3. Do not pretend to be someone else, or use a name, handle or photo that is not yours to use.
4. Tell us at once if someone else has got into your account: anish@vanagrha.com.
5. You must have accepted the current Terms and confirmed you are 18 or older before you can post, comment, report or share a garden. If we change these Terms in a way that matters, we will ask you to accept them again.

What you may not post

Under Indian law (Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules, 2021) you may not post, share, upload or send anything that:

1. belongs to someone else and you have no right to share;
2. is obscene, pornographic or paedophilic, invades someone's privacy (including bodily privacy), is insulting or harassing on the basis of gender, is racially or ethnically objectionable, relates to or encourages money laundering or gambling, or promotes enmity between groups on grounds of religion or caste with intent to incite violence;
3. is harmful to children;
4. infringes a patent, trade mark, copyright or other proprietary right;
5. deceives or misleads about where a message came from, or knowingly and intentionally shares misinformation, or information that is patently false and untrue or misleading;
6. pretends to be another person or organisation;
7. threatens the unity, integrity, defence, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with other countries, or public order, or incites any offence, prevents its investigation, or insults another nation;
8. contains software viruses or any code meant to interrupt, destroy or limit any computer resource;
9. is synthetically generated or altered so that it falsely appears real, where the law forbids it;
10. breaks any other law in force.

Our Community Guidelines add the house rules: be kind and share real gardens; credit people and say where a fact comes from; no selling, advertising or spam; no harassment, hate or sexual content; no sharing of other people's private information; no dangerous plant advice, such as saying a poisonous plant is safe to eat or advising a dose of a plant as a remedy; and label AI images: if a garden photo was made or substantially changed by AI, tick “Made or changed by AI” when you add it.

Your content

1. You keep your copyright in everything you post.
2. Text you contribute (comments, answers, experiences, questions and suggestions about plant facts) is licensed by you to everyone under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-SA 4.0). Anyone may copy, adapt and share it, for any purpose, if they credit you (by your handle) and share their version on the same terms.
3. Gardens. A garden's title, notes and plan (its layout and plant list) are yours. When you share a garden with everyone, you give every other member a free, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to copy the plan with “Make it mine”, and to change and keep their copy, as long as it credits you as the original gardener. The copy does not include your photos. Gardens you keep private or share by link only cannot be copied by others.
4. Photos stay yours. When you add a photo, you give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to store, show, resize and compress it in Vanagrha and on our website, to the people you chose to share it with. This licence ends when you delete the photo or your account, except that we keep copies for as long as the law requires and in backups until they are deleted.
5. Our licence to run Vanagrha. For everything you post, you also give us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, format, adapt (for example resize or translate), show and distribute it, in connection with operating, providing and improving Vanagrha. We may do this without showing a Creative Commons notice, and we may sublicense these rights to the companies that host and process data for us. For photos it ends as described in point 4; for text and shared plans it continues, as their CC BY-SA and “Make it mine” licences do.
6. Your promise. You promise that you own what you post, or have permission to post it, that it is lawful, and that it does not break these Terms.

Plant information

1. Plant facts in Vanagrha (light, size, water, flowering, climate and toxicity) come from published sources, our own research and members. They are general guidance, not a promise of results. Gardens differ in soil, light, water and weather.
2. Facts set by our experts are published by us. Each has a source, and toxicity facts are checked by two people. We record who set or changed each fact, and when.
3. We show toxicity only as what a named source says, with the date: for example “NC State Extension lists it as toxic to cats (March 2026)”, or “lists it as non-toxic to dogs” where a source says so. Where no source says, we show “No pet-safety information yet”. We never say a plant is safe. A plant a source lists as non-toxic can still cause allergies or harm.
4. This is not medical or veterinary advice. If a child, a pet or anyone may have eaten a plant, contact a doctor or vet straight away, or call the National Poisons Information Centre (AIIMS, New Delhi) on 1800 116 117, free and open 24 hours.
5. Answers and experiences from other members are their own views. Use your judgement, and check with a professional before acting on advice that could affect health or safety.
6. Weather, sun and climate figures are estimates from public data and may be wrong.

Reports and moderation

Any signed-in member can report a garden, comment, question, answer, experience, plant-fact suggestion or profile, with a reason, up to 20 reports a day. Anyone, with or without an account, can use our complaints form.

What is automated, and what a person decides:

1. Hiding while a report waits. Our system automatically hides an item from everyone except its author, until a person reviews it, when enough established members report it (3 for most items, 5 for gardens and profiles), and their accounts were created on at least two different days. An established member has had an account for at least 7 days and, once 5 of their reports have been decided, has had no more than half of them dismissed. This is a safety feature: a hidden item has not been judged.
2. Trusted members (see the Community Guidelines) are not hidden by ordinary reports alone: a person reviews first.
3. Urgent reports. A report or complaint of an intimate image or of impersonation hides the item as soon as we receive it. A person then confirms the removal or puts the item back within 2 hours.
4. New accounts. For an account's first 7 days, a post or shared garden that contains a link, a phone number or a messaging handle is automatically held until a person releases it.
5. Sorting. Automated tools, including AI, help sort and prioritise reports. They never dismiss, close or decide one.
6. Decisions. A person in the relevant role (a moderator, or our Grievance Officer) decides every report and complaint. They either uphold it (the item stays hidden or is removed, and its author loses 20 reputation points and receives a strike) or dismiss it (the item is shown again). Every decision is logged.
7. You are told. If something of yours is hidden or removed, we tell you what, why, and the role of the person who decided. Members who reported it are told the outcome.
8. Ask again. If you disagree, you can ask us to look again once per decision, within 20 days, in Activity. A different person reviews it and tells you the result. If the decision is reversed, the strike and the reputation loss are undone.

A strike lasts 90 days. You can see your strikes and any pause in Settings, Account status. You can delete anything you wrote and any comment on your own gardens, and block or mute other members. We remind every member of these rules in the app every 3 months.

To keep Vanagrha safe and lawful, we may hide or remove content, pause posting, hide a profile's name and photo, or close an account, as described above or where the law requires. We act on court orders and lawful government directions as the IT Rules require.

Our content and other people’s

1. The Vanagrha name, logo, design, software, our own plant models and the facts our experts set belong to us or our licensors. You may use them only to use the app, except where a licence shown in the app (for example CC BY-SA) allows more.
2. Plant data, photos and maps from other sources are used under their own licences, listed on our Credits page. Those licences govern your reuse of that material.
3. Do not scrape, copy in bulk, or reverse-engineer the app, or try to get around its security or limits.

Experts and volunteers

Some members help as experts or volunteers, under a separate agreement with us. An expert is named on a fact only with their consent. Volunteers never see members' personal data, or reports of intimate images or impersonation.

Complaints

Our Grievance Officer is Anish Garg, Director, Vanagrha, anish@vanagrha.com, at Life Science Education Trust, 57/1, Agrahara, Yelahanka, Kogilu, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560064. You can complain through the complaints form without an account; the times we act within, counted from when we receive your complaint, are on that page. If you are unhappy with our decision, you may appeal to the Grievance Appellate Committee within 30 days, at gac.gov.in. Court and government orders go to anish@vanagrha.com.

Ending your account

1. You can delete your account at any time in Settings. It is closed at once, and your gardens, posts and saved plants are removed from Vanagrha straight away. Photo files are deleted from our storage within 30 days.
2. We may close your account if you seriously or repeatedly break these Terms, or if the law requires it. We will tell you why, unless the law forbids it.
3. As the IT Rules require, we keep content we removed, and your registration details, for 180 days after deletion, where no one can reach them through the app, and then delete them. Backup copies are deleted after 7 days.
4. Text you licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0, garden plans others copied, and copies others lawfully made may remain after you leave.

Liability

1. Vanagrha is free and provided “as is”. We try to keep it working and accurate, but we do not promise that it will be error-free, always available, or right for your garden.
2. To the extent the law allows, we are not responsible for loss or damage from using Vanagrha, or from relying on plant information or other members' advice.
3. To the extent the law allows, our total liability to you for all claims arising from Vanagrha is limited to ₹5,000.
4. None of this limits or excludes our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else the law does not allow us to limit, or your rights as a consumer.

Law, changes and contact

1. We may change these Terms. If a change matters, we will tell you in the app and ask you to accept again before you post. This is version 2026-10-28.
2. These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Courts in Bengaluru, Karnataka decide disputes, subject to any right you have by law to go to another forum.
3. If any part of these Terms is found invalid, the rest still applies.
4. Questions and complaints: anish@vanagrha.com.