Terms of Service

What the platform does today — notes for drafting

Everything in this section is implemented and can be verified in the product. It is here so the eventual terms describe the service that exists rather than one that was imagined.

1. What Dato is

Dato is an e-commerce operator for restaurant food delivery in the Manipal and Udupi area. Customers order from restaurants through the app; independent delivery partners carry the orders. Dato is not the restaurant and does not cook.

2. Money and tax

• Customers pay the restaurant's own menu price. Where a restaurant's prices do not already include GST, 5% is added to them, rounded up to the nearest rupee, and the price shown includes it. The amount added covers that GST, and what remains from rounding is a platform charge, both stated on the bill. There is no surge pricing. Prices shown and the delivery fee include GST; nothing is added on top at checkout.
• A flat delivery fee of ₹39 is charged on every delivery within the delivery area, and shown before payment. It may be reduced or waived during a promotion.
• Tax on the restaurant service is paid by Dato as the e-commerce operator under section 9(5) of the CGST Act, at 5%. The delivery fee carries 18% as Dato's own service. Both are included in the prices shown and itemised on the tax invoice, which is issued by Dato for the whole order, not by the restaurant.
• While a first-order offer runs, one listed item on a customer's first order may be free. It is limited to one per verified mobile number and one per delivery address, is subject to a daily limit, and may end at any time. A free item that is cancelled before the kitchen starts on it can be claimed again; once cooked, it has been used.
• Restaurants are charged no commission. A restaurant is paid everything the customer paid for its food.
• A refund is accompanied by a credit note reversing the invoice, issued automatically when the refund settles.

3. Cancellations and refunds

Money comes back automatically in the situations below. Everything else is a support ticket and an investigation.

• The order did not arrive. The delivery code was never given to a rider and the rider never reached the delivery address. The full amount is refunded.
• The order was cancelled by Dato, the restaurant or the rider. The customer pays nothing. The refund is raised automatically and reaches the payment method within minutes.

The customer cancels. A customer may cancel any order that has not yet been delivered. Cancelling is free until the restaurant starts cooking; after that the food has been made and is paid for, and only the delivery charge is returned. The app shows the exact amount that will come back before the customer confirms, and does not cancel for less than it showed. An order that is still undelivered 90 minutes after it was placed may be cancelled for a full refund — there is no separate refund for a late delivery.

A customer who thinks a cancellation was charged unfairly can raise it from the order with “Get help with this order”. If a person agrees, the rest of the money is refunded to the original payment method, on top of what already came back.

A restaurant may reject or cancel an order it has not yet handed over; an operator may cancel any order that is not yet delivered.

Every other complaint — a missing item, a wrong item, food that arrived cold or spilled — is raised as a support ticket and decided by a person, who reviews the order timeline and whether the delivery code was given before deciding. There is no self-service refund button. Restaurants that repeatedly disappoint are handled through ratings and delisting rather than through refunds.

• Refunds are returned to the original payment method. Dato does not issue store credit in place of a refund.
• A refund decision states the evidence it rested on, and that record is kept with the order.
• Refunds are retried automatically and escalated to a human if they keep failing.

4. Delivery partners

• Delivery partners are independent, choose their own hours by going on and off shift, and may decline any offered order.
• Verification of a licence and vehicle is required before a partner may take orders.
• Delivery is confirmed by a one-time code the customer gives the partner at handover.
• Where orders are assigned automatically, the ranking is recorded for every offer and can be explained afterwards.

5. Restaurant partners

• Restaurants set their own prices, menu, opening hours and whether they are currently accepting orders.
• FSSAI and GSTIN details are collected and verified before a storefront goes live.
• Payouts are settled on a schedule: the price paid for each item × units sold, less any tax the law requires Dato to collect at source.
• Changing payout bank details requires operator approval — a merchant cannot redirect its own payouts unilaterally.

6. Accounts and data

• Accounts are identified by an Indian mobile number, verified by one-time code.
• Any account may be deleted from inside the app, immediately, with no request and no waiting period. See the account deletion page for what is erased and what is retained.
• Any account may download a copy of its personal data from the app.
• Past orders are retained as financial records with every identifying detail erased from them.

7. Still to be drafted

The following are genuinely absent and a lawyer will need to supply them: limitation of liability, indemnities, the governing law and dispute-resolution clause, the grounds and process for suspending or terminating an account, intellectual property, force majeure, how changes to these terms are notified, and the separate partner agreements for restaurants and delivery partners referenced elsewhere in the product.

Restaurant Partner Agreement

Not yet drafted. Section 5 above describes what the platform does with restaurant partners today.

Delivery Partner Agreement

Not yet drafted. Section 4 above describes what the platform does with delivery partners today.

Contact

Questions about this document: crshetty7@gmail.com