Privacy

Who we are

FirmsNest is a software platform, operated by FirmsNest Software Labs Pvt Ltd, that gives Indian chartered-accountancy firms a branded client portal. When a firm uses FirmsNest, that firm is the controller of its clients' personal data; FirmsNest processes that data on the firm's instructions, as its processor. For the accounts of the people who sign in, and for our own website, FirmsNest is the controller.

Data we process

• Accounts: the name, email, role, and authentication data of the people who sign in to a firm's portal.
• Engagement data (on a firm's behalf): the information a firm's clients provide to run an engagement — scoping answers, documents, and tax identifiers. Aadhaar is stored as the last four digits only; bank-account details are not collected or stored.
• Operational logs: audit records of actions and amounts, deliberately kept free of personal-data strings.

Cookies and similar technologies

The signed-in portal uses strictly necessary cookies to keep you logged in and to protect forms against automated abuse (Cloudflare Turnstile). On our public website we may also use analytics and advertising-measurement tools, such as the LinkedIn Insight Tag, to understand how visitors find us. These run only on the public marketing site — never inside the signed-in portal — and we do not sell your personal data.

Where your data lives

Personal data is hosted in an India region, consistent with the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Our core services — authentication, database, storage and hosting — run in India. Where a specialised provider is used (for example, for some AI processing), we prefer India-resident processing; where that is not possible we put appropriate contractual safeguards in place. The providers we rely on are listed below.

Service providers we use

We use a small set of established providers strictly to deliver the service, each bound by contract to process data only on our instructions:

• Supabase — authentication, database, and document storage (India region).
• Vercel — application hosting (Mumbai region).
• Resend — transactional and notification email.
• Twilio and Meta Platforms — SMS and WhatsApp messaging.
• Razorpay — payment processing.
• Cloudflare — network security and bot protection.
• AI processing — Amazon Web Services (Bedrock, Mumbai region) for document indexing, and Sarvam for language models.

AI features

Two assistants process data to help a firm work: Lipik reads a firm's documents to draft working papers for a chartered accountant to review, and Iris answers a verified client's routine questions on WhatsApp from the firm's portal. AI logs are redacted, the assistants never give professional advice, and our AI providers do not train their models on identifiable content without consent.

Payments

Client fees are paid to each firm through that firm's own Razorpay account or UPI ID. FirmsNest never holds, routes, or takes a share of client money, and does not store card or bank-credential data for those payments.

How we protect it

Each firm's data is isolated and enforced at the database, so one firm can never read another's records. Sensitive fields are encrypted, and access is restricted to authorised, authenticated users.

Retention

Engagement documents and audit records are retained for seven years, consistent with professional record-keeping norms, unless a firm instructs otherwise. Account data is kept for as long as the account is active and for a reasonable period afterwards.

Your rights

Under the DPDP Act, data principals may seek access to, correction of, or erasure of their personal data, and may nominate another person to exercise these rights. Because each firm controls its clients' data, such requests are usually handled with and through the relevant firm. You can also reach our grievance contact at support@firmsnest.in, and we will respond within the timelines the DPDP Act prescribes.

Changes to this notice

We may update this notice as the service and the law evolve. Material changes will be reflected in the “last updated” date above, and significant changes will be notified to firms.

Contact

Questions about this policy: support@firmsnest.in.