← LalaCar

Terms of Service

Version 2.0 · Last updated 26 August 2026 · Replaces Version 1.0 (9 July 2026)

1. Nature of the service

LalaCar ("we", "us"), operated by Rudraayaan AI Technologies Private Limited, is an intermediary within the meaning of Section 2(1)(w) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. We provide a technology platform on which private individuals may (a) share private cars on a cost-recovery basis (carpooling), (b) discover and transact with independent local merchants, and (c) enable masked contact calls for parked vehicles.

LalaCar is not a transport service provider, taxi operator, fleet owner, or an "aggregator" under Section 93 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 or the Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, 2020. We do not own, operate, maintain or inspect any vehicle; we do not employ, engage, supervise, dispatch or route any driver; we do not fix fares (the per-km ceiling in clause 3 is a cost-recovery cap, not a fare); and we take 0% commission on rides. Drivers are private individuals acting in their personal capacity. No driver is an employee, agent, contractor or representative of LalaCar, and no agency, partnership or employment relationship is created by these Terms. The contract of carriage for every ride is exclusively between the driver and the rider; LalaCar is not a party to it.

Cost recovery means a driver may recover only proportionate fuel, toll and reasonable wear costs. LalaCar does not collect, hold or settle ride payments — riders pay drivers directly in cash.

2. Eligibility

  • You must be at least 18 years old and competent to contract under the Indian Contract Act, 1872.
  • To drive: hold a valid Indian Driving Licence, own or be authorised to drive the registered vehicle, and complete KYC.
  • One natural person, one account (enforced via phone + DL + PAN hash + device fingerprint).
  • Our document checks verify that documents were submitted; they are not a certification of any person's driving competence, character, or of any vehicle's roadworthiness.

3. Carpool rules

  • Drivers must publish a fair cost-recovery price within the platform cap (₹3.50/km/seat in v1) and may publish up to 4 rides per day.
  • Drivers must at all times comply with the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988 and rules thereunder — including holding a valid licence, registration, insurance and PUC certificate, and never carrying more passengers than the vehicle's registered seating capacity.
  • Passengers must treat drivers and co-passengers with respect — no harassment, no discrimination.
  • No firearms, hazardous materials or unlawful items in shared rides.
  • Use the in-trip features (OTP, share-trip, SOS, cash confirmation) as designed.
  • Using LalaCar to run a commercial taxi service, or to solicit payment above the cost-recovery cap, is a material breach.

4. Payments for rides

Ride payments are cash at drop-off, paid directly by the rider to the driver. LalaCar takes no ride payment of any kind inside the app: no card, no UPI collection, no mandate, no hold, no escrow. Booking and cancelling are free. Because we never hold ride money, there is nothing for us to refund; any amount owed between a rider and a driver is settled between them in cash. The in-app cash-confirmation step is a record-keeping feature only and is not a payment service.

5. Contact-credit balance (masked calls)

Vehicle owners who opt in to the Contact QR feature receive a small prepaid contact-credit balance used solely to pay for masked calls bridged through our telephony provider. Credits: (a) can be spent only on LalaCar's own masked-call feature and on no other goods or services — the balance is a closed, non-transferable service credit, not a wallet, deposit or payment instrument; (b) cannot be transferred to any person, cannot be withdrawn as cash, and earn no interest; (c) promotional credits (including the sign-up bonus) have no cash value and may be varied or withdrawn prospectively. Credits you have purchased and not consumed will be refunded to your source account on written request or on account closure; promotional credits are forfeited. Top-ups submitted by UPI are credited after manual verification against our bank statement; a top-up reference (UTR) can be used once.

6. Cancellation & disputes

WhoWhenEffect
PassengerAny time before pickupSeat released; nothing is charged
DriverAny time before pickup, only while no seat is bookedPassengers are notified; nothing is charged
EitherRepeated late cancellationsRatings and reliability are affected

Once a seat is booked, only the rider can release it; a rider may report a driver no-show after the departure time, which releases the seat and opens a safety incident. Disputes about cash payment are resolved through ratings, reliability adjustments and, in severe cases, suspension. LalaCar does not refund ride cash because we never hold it.

7. Shop orders, vouchers & merchant packs

Merchants on LalaCar are independent businesses. When you place an order or redeem a voucher, the sale contract is exclusively between you and the merchant; you pay the merchant in cash at the counter. LalaCar operates as a marketplace intermediary consistent with the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020: the merchant is solely responsible for its products and services, their quality, safety, weights and measures, pricing, applicable food-safety (FSSAI) and other licences, GST invoicing, and after-sales service. We display merchant information as provided by the merchant and verify it only to the extent stated in our onboarding checks.

Vouchers are offered by merchants who are solely responsible for honouring them; LalaCar facilitates issuance and redemption. Merchants purchase pre-paid Voucher Packs (₹1,000 incl GST for 50 voucher-pushes); new merchants receive 50 free push-credits valid 7 days. Pack purchases are generally non-refundable once credited; as a courtesy and at our discretion we may refund the unused portion if requested within 14 days AND five or fewer credits have been consumed.

8. Safety features & masked calls

In-trip OTPs, trip-sharing, live location, ratings, the SOS button and masked calling are assistive tools offered on a best-effort basis. They depend on your device, network coverage, GPS accuracy and third-party telephony, and may fail or be unavailable. They are not an emergency service, a security service, or a guarantee of anyone's safety or identity. In an emergency, always contact the public emergency number 112 first. Masked calls are not recorded; they are time-capped; call metadata (numbers, duration, status) is processed for connecting and billing the call as described in the Privacy Policy.

9. Insurance & road incidents

  • Motor accidents are governed by the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988. Statutory compensation claims arising out of the use of a motor vehicle lie against the vehicle's owner, driver and/or insurer, before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal or other competent forum. LalaCar is not the owner, operator or insurer of any vehicle and is not a proper party to such claims.
  • Every driver warrants that the vehicle carries valid insurance as required by Section 146 of the Motor Vehicles Act, 1988, and that the driver has confirmed with their insurer that non-commercial, cost-recovery carpooling does not breach the terms of their policy. Some private-car policies restrict carriage of passengers for "hire or reward"; it is the driver's sole responsibility to ensure cost-sharing use is within their policy before publishing a ride.
  • Riders acknowledge that they are travelling in a private vehicle driven by a private individual, at their own risk, and that LalaCar provides no passenger insurance, personal-accident cover or medical cover in v1. We recommend that all users maintain their own personal-accident and health insurance.
  • LalaCar is not a party to, and gives no advice on, any insurance contract. Nothing in the Services is an offer of insurance, a guarantee of coverage, or an assumption of liability for any on-road incident, accident, injury, death, loss of or damage to property, traffic violation, or dispute occurring before, during or after a ride.
  • Nothing in this clause limits any right a person has against a driver, owner or insurer under statute.

10. User content & conduct

You are solely responsible for content you post (profile, chat, ratings, photos, shop listings). We have zero tolerance for objectionable content and abusive users: the app provides tools to report content and to block another user, blocked users cannot see or contact you, and we act on reports — typically within 24 hours for safety reports — including removing content and ejecting offenders. Don't impersonate, reverse-engineer, scrape or bot the Services; don't use LalaCar for commercial taxi services or bypass the price cap; don't post abusive, false or unlawful content. You grant us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host and display your content solely to operate the Services. We may remove content that violates these Terms or applicable law, and we respond to lawful take-down requests within the timelines in clause 16.

11. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless LalaCar, Rudraayaan AI Technologies Private Limited and their officers, employees and agents from and against any claim, demand, loss, liability, penalty or expense (including reasonable legal costs) arising out of or relating to: (a) your use of a vehicle or participation in a ride, including any accident, injury, death or property damage; (b) your breach of these Terms or of applicable law, including motor-vehicle, tax and insurance laws; (c) your content; (d) your dealings with another user or merchant; or (e) for merchants, the products and services you sell. This clause survives termination.

12. Disclaimers & limitation of liability

The Service is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranty of any kind. We do not warrant the identity, conduct, competence or solvency of any user, the roadworthiness of any vehicle, the accuracy of any listing, or uninterrupted availability of the platform. To the maximum extent permitted by law: (a) LalaCar is not liable for the acts or omissions of any driver, rider, merchant or other user, whether on-platform or off-platform; (b) LalaCar is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, data or goodwill; and (c) LalaCar's aggregate liability for all claims in any 12-month period shall not exceed ₹10,000 or the amounts actually paid by you to LalaCar in the 6 months before the first claim, whichever is greater. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited under Indian law, or excludes a consumer's statutory rights.

13. Suspension & termination

We may suspend or terminate an account for breach, fraud, safety concerns, repeated cancellations, or as required by law. Where practicable we give notice and an opportunity to respond; pending obligations are settled after due process. You may close your account at any time from the app or at lalacar.in/delete-account.

14. App stores

If you downloaded the app from the Apple App Store or Google Play: these Terms are between you and us alone — Apple Inc. and Google LLC are not parties, have no obligation to furnish maintenance or support, and are not responsible for the app, any claims relating to it, or third-party intellectual-property claims. Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these Terms and may enforce them against you. You represent that you are not in a country subject to a relevant government embargo and are not on any prohibited-party list, and you must also comply with the applicable store's terms of service.

15. Governing law & dispute resolution

These Terms are governed by the laws of India. Disputes are resolved by final and binding arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, seated at Hyderabad, Telangana, before a sole arbitrator, in English. Subject to the arbitration clause, the courts at Hyderabad have exclusive jurisdiction. A user qualifying as a "consumer" under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 retains their statutory right to approach the relevant Consumer Commission, and nothing in these Terms limits any person's statutory remedies before the Motor Accident Claims Tribunal.

16. Intermediary disclosures (IT Rules 2021)

Grievance Officer: Sandeep Naredla, grievance@lalacar.in — acknowledgement within 24 hours, resolution within 15 days. Take-down requests: response within 36 hours. Court or government orders: as directed. Postal address available on request via support@lalacar.in.

17. General

  • Force majeure: we are not liable for delay or failure caused by events beyond our reasonable control (network or cloud outages, natural events, strikes, government action).
  • Severability: if any clause is held unenforceable, the remainder stays in force; the clause is read down to the minimum extent needed.
  • Entire agreement: these Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement between you and us for the Services.
  • Assignment: you may not assign these Terms; we may assign them to an affiliate or successor with notice.
  • No waiver: not enforcing a clause is not a waiver of it.
  • Survival: clauses 9, 11, 12, 15 and this clause survive termination.
  • Notices: we give notice in-app or to your registered email/phone; you give notice to the addresses in clause 16.

18. Changes

We may update these Terms; material changes get 15 days' notice in-app and by email. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.

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