Terms and conditions

Visit the property in person, in daylight, before any money changes hands. Know who you are dealing with and check their ID. Agree the terms in writing. Then pay exactly what you agreed, and nothing more.

This applies to tenants buying a room, tenants renting one, and owners letting one out alike. It is the single most effective protection against losing a deposit, and the step most often skipped.

A video call is a useful second opinion. It is not a substitute for being there, and it is not treated as one below.

Room Kiraya is a listing platform. We publish the rooms, PG beds, shops and godowns that owners have listed, we make them searchable, and we give owners and tenants the tools to run the tenancy once they have agreed it.

We are not the landlord, the tenant, the buyer, the seller, the broker or the agent. We are not a party to the agreement you make with the other person, and we do not become one by introducing you.

This is the part that is easy to skip and expensive to skip, so it is written as plainly as we can manage.

We do not verify a title deed, a rental agreement or an identity. A listing describes what an owner told us, and it is their responsibility to have told us the truth. Please do not treat a listing as proof of anything, and please verify anything that matters to you before you commit money to it.

In order, and not rearranged:

1. 1

   Look

   Read the listing properly. Photos, price, deposit, locality, house rules and what the owner says is included. If something is missing or the price is far below anything nearby, that is your first warning and it comes before you make contact.

2. 2

   Visit

   See the room in person, in daylight, before any money changes hands. This applies to buying a property as much as to renting one — a video call is not a visit, and a doorstep does not count if you have not been inside, seen the water supply, checked the mobile signal and looked at the neighbours.

3. 3

   Verify

   Know who you are dealing with. Ask the owner for a government photo ID and, for a rental, proof that the person showing you the room is the person entitled to rent it out. For a purchase, verify the title documents and registration. A refusal to show ID is an answer.

4. 4

   Agree

   Only now fix the terms: rent or price, deposit and how many months, what the deposit covers, notice period, lock-in, who pays for which utility, what the house rules are, and what happens if either side wants to leave. Put all of it in writing — a message thread is enough, and it is worth more than a handshake.

5. 5

   Pay

   Pay the agreed amount and nothing more, to the person you met, through a method that leaves a record. The account name should match the ID you were shown. Never pay a "booking amount", a "token", a "courier fee" or a "registration charge" before you have visited.

6. 6

   Move in

   Do a joint handover: meter readings photographed, keys and number of keys counted, existing damage noted in writing and photographed, and an inventory of what is being left behind. Both sides sign the same record. This is the cheapest protection in the whole process and the most often skipped.

These are the attempts we see reported most often, in the form they take. The pattern is nearly always the same: urgency, a reason not to visit, and a request for money or a secret.

• Pay only after a visit, and only the amount you have agreed in writing.
• The account name must match the ID of the person you met. If it does not, that is not the payment you agreed to make.
• Never transfer money to a third party, a "company", an agent or a number supplied in a message.
• Prefer UPI or a bank transfer over cash: both leave a record you can point at later, and both show a name.
• Always get something back — a receipt, a message, an app entry — that says what the payment was for.
• Never share an OTP, a PIN or a screen-sharing session. No payment ever requires one.
• If an arrangement starts to feel wrong, stop. Nothing legitimate breaks off when you ask a reasonable question.

For a purchase, the same principle applies with the additional steps that any property transfer in India requires: registered title, verification at the sub-registrar office, and payment only through a route that gives you a document. Walk away from any sale that cannot be registered.

• Give an accurate description of what you need and what you can pay.
• Turn up to a visit when you said you would, or tell the owner in advance that you cannot.
• Pay the rent on the date agreed, and tell the owner before you are late rather than after.
• Look after the property, and tell the owner promptly about a leak, a fault or a repair that is needed.
• Give notice as agreed when you leave, and leave the property as you found it apart from fair wear and tear.
• Report a suspicious listing or request to us instead of continuing the conversation.

• List only a property you are entitled to rent out or sell, and only once.
• Describe it honestly: the real rent, the real deposit, the real deposit terms, the real furnishing, the real rules, and the real photos.
• Keep the rent, deposit and availability shown on the listing current, and mark it occupied or remove it when it is not available.
• Meet a tenant at the property and in person before an agreement, and be willing to show ID.
• Give a receipt for every payment, itemised, and use the app's confirmed receipts where you can.
• Agree the notice period, the lock-in and the utility split in writing before anyone moves in.
• Report a tenant who behaves fraudulently, so the next person is protected.

The following are not permitted anywhere on Room Kiraya, in a listing, in a message or in the app. We remove them, and we suspend the account that posted them.

An account is a phone number and a one-time code. You are responsible for what happens under your number: do not share the code that reaches it, and tell us if you think somebody else has access to it.

You must be old enough to enter a contract in India to hold an account. One person or business may hold one account per phone number. An account is not transferable.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that is used to defraud somebody, or that we are asked to close by someone it is harming. Where a listing is fraudulent, we remove it and preserve what we need to deal with the account behind it.

You can stop using the service and ask us to delete your account at any time. Listings you have published may be kept in an archived form where we need them to resolve a complaint or a legal obligation.

The app produces itemised bills, logs meter readings and records receipts. That makes a tenancy easier to run and much easier to settle, and it is the main thing the app adds.

What it is not is a payment system. We do not hold rent, do not take a fee for taking rent, do not guarantee that a payment was made, and cannot reverse one. A receipt in the app is a record the two of you made; it is not a bank statement and it is not a title document.

Money for rent, deposit, sale price or anything else moves directly between the tenant and the owner, or the buyer and the seller. Anything that routes rent through us should be reported to us, because it is either a mistake or someone impersonating us.

The website is for finding a room. The app is for everything that happens after you have agreed one, and it is free.

You keep ownership of the photos and text you upload. By publishing a listing you giveRoom Kiraya permission to display, resize and store it for the purpose of running the listing, and to show it to people who search.

Upload only content that is yours, or that you have the right to publish. Do not upload someone else's photographs, and do not use photos of a person, vehicle or plate without consent.

We may remove content that infringes someone's rights, misleads people, or is unlawful. If you believe we have removed something wrongly, tell us and we will look again.

Room Kiraya provides a place for owners to publish listings and for people to search them. It is not a letting agency, a property manager, a bank, an escrow service or a party to the agreement between a tenant and an owner.

Because of that, we cannot and do not take responsibility for what happens between the people a listing introduces. That includes, without limitation:

If money is lost through a fraudulent listing or an unsafe request, our position is that the loss belongs to the person who was deceived, and that we are not liable for reimbursing it. We will still help: we can suspend the account, remove the listing, preserve the messages, and point you at the police, the Cyber Crime portal and your bank.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for any statutory right you have as a consumer. The rest of this clause applies only to the extent the law allows it.

You agree to indemnify Room Kiraya against claims, losses and reasonable costs arising from a breach of these terms by you, from a listing you publish that is false, misleading or unlawful, from content you upload that infringes someone else's rights, or from anything you do using your account.

This applies to tenants, owners and agents alike, and it is why we ask you to describe a property honestly: an inaccurate listing creates a liability for the person who wrote it.

A dispute about rent, deposit, condition, notice period or the terms of a sale is a dispute between the tenant and the owner, and it is for you two to resolve, with the help of a local consumer forum, rent tribunal or civil court as appropriate. We are not a party to it and we cannot award money, order a refund or rule on it.

We do handle complaints about the service itself: a listing that is false, an account that is fraudulent, a request for money that should not have been made, or content that should not be here. Report those and we will act.

Keep your own record. The chat thread, the receipts and the photos from the handover are the evidence that decides a dispute, and nobody on our side can recreate them for you.

We may update these terms, and the version that applied is the one published on this page with the date shown at the top. We will publish material changes here and, where the change affects you directly, in the app before they take effect.

Continuing to use Room Kiraya after a change means you accept the updated terms. If you do not accept them, you can stop using the service and close your account.

For a question, a complaint, a report of a fraudulent listing, a request to remove content, or to appeal a suspension:

Email

Not published yet. Until it is, report through the in-app support option in the Room Kiraya app, which reaches a person.

Run by

[registered company name], [registered address]

We never call, message or email you asking for an OTP, a password, a bank detail or a payment. If a call or message claims to be from Room Kiraya and asks for any of those, it is not us. Do not act on it, and report it.

If you have lost money to a fraudulent listing, contact your bank immediately to try to stop the payment, then report it to the local police and to the national Cyber Crime reporting portal. Speed is what determines whether money can be recovered.