Privacy policy

Last Updated on September 24, 2022.

• This privacy policy covers situations where we, Sause, access, collect, store process, use, disclose or transfer your personal information in paper or electronic form. It also covers situations where approved partners or other members of AHA Enterprises use your personal information on our behalf.
• Our privacy policy does not extend to services provided by other companies acting on their own account, such as franchisees and licensees or when you share information through social media (WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), or other online platforms owned and managed by other companies. These other companies have their own privacy policies in place, so remember that the way they use any personal information you give them will be subject to their rules and not ours.
• We, Sause, act as the “data controller”, which means that we determine “why” and “how” your personal information is collected and used. We are an Indian firm, located in  45 Pulikuthi Main Road, 636006, Salem District, Tamil Nadu, India and registered with GST number 33ABXFA7046EIZA.
• To be able to deliver our products and services to you, we need to share your personal information with approved partners or other members of AHA Enterprises who generally act as our “data processors”. All are bound by an obligation to implement appropriate security measures to protect personal data in their possession and are bound by a strict confidentiality agreement and specific contractual terms on “how” and “when” they are allowed to use your personal information on our behalf. Please be aware that certain approved partners, such as our social media, websites could also determine “why” and “how” your personal information is used. They have their own privacy and cookies policies, so remember that the personal information you give them will be subject to their rules and not ours.
• Your local legislation may not refer to the terms “data controller” or “data processor”, but respectively to terms such as “data user”, “owner”, “business”, “responsible party”, etc., and as “data intermediary”, “operator”, etc. In order to understand our role, please note that we, Sause, are the entity who decides on the methods and purposes of the processing of your personal information by determining “why” and “how” your personal information is collected and used. Our “data processors” are entities who use your personal information on our behalf by receiving instructions from us on “how” and “when” they are allowed to use it. 
• Sause will collect, hold, use and disclose your personal information for the purposes described in this section. The processing of your personal information will comply with your privacy legislation and rely on the legal bases set out in this section.
• We will use your personal information to manage our relationship with you and to perform our obligations under the contract you conclude with us when you purchase or otherwise request products or services from us. This can cover various activities such as internal accounting, processing your payment or delivery. To provide you with the products and services you have requested, we will access, collect, store, process, use, disclose and transfer your personal information for invoicing, payment management and internal accounting. Certain specific information may be required to provide you with request the repair of a product, or purchase products or services by phone, or on our website or a marketplace. In such cases, we could access, collect, store, and use your personal information for delivery, warehousing and return management.
• Once you have requested us to create your Sause profile, your personal information will be linked to this profile, where we will keep all the information we have on you. This could include personal information we obtain directly from you as well as from other sources in accordance with applicable legislation. The information in your Sause profile is crucial to provide you with the Sause personalized and tailored experience, and thus it needs to be kept up to date for the best experience.
• Once you have asked us to create your Sause profile, we will supplement it with personal information such as your purchases, preferences and contact details. In this context, please be aware that we use personal identification data, such as your email address or phone number, to link an interaction or a purchase with your Sause profile. This also applies when checking out as a guest on our website when making a purchase. In addition, we may use your date of birth to determine that you are old enough to use our services.
• In order to keep your personal information accurate, we will take every reasonable step to ensure that personal information we hold is properly updated. Subject to your applicable privacy legislation you may have the right to have your information rectified at any time, and in event please let us know if any of your information needs updating or correcting, and we will make our best efforts to detect and correct inaccurate personal information (data cleansing) and delete any duplicated dataset. This may require us to correct typographical errors or inconsistent personal information.
• For the purpose of providing, you the Sause experience, we will collect, store, process, use, disclose and transfer your personal information to be able to identify you. This will allow us to provide you with the tailored assistance you are asking for or to share relevant information with you. In addition, when you contact us, we may retain the personal information you share with us to always provide you with such a customised and personalised experience. This could happen if you are an existing or potential customer. Your personal information will be linked to your Sause profile, if you have requested us to create one, or to a potential customer profile. In addition, the monitoring of our interaction (including via voice or video recording, with prior notice to you) enables us to improve the quality and safety of our services and to provide you with tailored answers. 
• You will receive information and updates about us either at your request (with your prior consent where required by law) or when we are authorised by law to send you such information and updates directly. Such communication can be global or local, and may include updates about our products and services, invitations to events, offers, surveys, etc. Our communications will be customised and specifically designed to be of interest to you and will be updated with any new personal information linked to your Sause profile. We will thus use your personal information to send you tailored communications or other customised advertisements or marketing campaigns. This use of your information includes some profiling activity. 
• When you share your contact information with us, we may use this personal information to contact you through related communication channels (such as text message, e-mail, post, internet means, social media or telephone), with your consent where required. You can of course request us not to use a particular channel of communication or opt-out (unsubscribe) from it by applying the opt-out option that will always be shared with you. If you want to stop receiving communication from us via all communication channels, please send an email to operations@hosause.com.
• Our communications could include tailored product recommendations we think you might like, personalised marketing content designed to suit your interests, personalised events invitations or, at your request and where available, personalised and customised products. For these purposes, we will use the information you provide to us (for example your date of birth, your country of residence, your preferred means of contact etc.) and/or jointly or independently, certain patterns we may observe when interacting with you (for example what type of products you like, which occasions you are shopping for etc.). With this information, we may create groups of similar customers (called “persona”) to whom we can decide to offer personalised content and experiences both in inbound or outbound interactions. In this context, we may make inferences about you, as derived from your personal information (profiling). This will allow us to customise your experience with Sause based on your interests and shopping habits (i.e. tailored communication). In order to provide you with such customised and personalised experience, you may be required to log in or identify yourself.
• To enrich your personal information, we may use cookies or other online advertising technologies. Via such technologies, we will collect personal information related to your activities on social media and your browsing activity across different websites and devices. (for example: to know if you have visited our website after opening a newsletter you have received). Using cookies or other online advertising technologies may also enable us to show you online advertisements that are “contextual” (meaning they are shown according to the webpage you are browsing), or “behavioural” or “interest based” (where advertisements are shown to you based on your interests which we have inferred from your information including demographic, geographic and interest-based data). We may use such advertisements to display products or services that are most relevant to you. If you no longer want to see customised online advertisements, you may request us to delete your Sause profile or modify your cookie preferences.
• Non-marketing communications may be sent upon your request, and/or may be important for your safety and the security of your personal information. You may still receive such communications even when you opt-out from certain marketing communications. The information communicated may be necessary for the correct performance of our contract with you or be mandatory to comply with some of our legal obligations.
• Non-marketing communications can include, but are not limited to: emailing you to verify your identity when you sign up to our services; emailing you for password and/or username reset; notifying you that a particular service has been or will be suspended for maintenance or terminated; notifying you of an upgrade, a rectification or an incident affecting our services that may involve your personal information; notifying you of an update to our privacy policy or Terms of Use; or informing you about any products or services you have requested or purchased.
• We will never contact you to ask for your password. Please be aware if you receive any request for this personal information.
• To deliver our products and services safely to you, perform our contract properly or comply with some of our legal obligations, we will implement fraud prevention and detection measures. Such measures will allow us to adequately perform our contract with you and/or protect our legitimate interests in defending ourselves against fraud.
• We may use administrative and technical measures to protect, our website, our systems, our networks, transactions occurring on our website or in our stores, and any other necessary means to protect the personal information we may access or store. For this purpose, we may also be required to verify your identity. Such measures may also be implemented for compliance purposes or to avoid sharing your personal information with any untrusted third parties. 
• To manage our activities, perform our obligations under our contract with you and comply with our legal obligations, we may need to access and use some of your personal information for finance, management or legal purposes, or business-related analytics & market research activities. For example, this could occur when we use the invoices we have issued in relation to your purchases for compliance or accountability purposes, or when we analyse personal information to understand the characteristics of our customers (what is the gender proportion, the average age etc.).
• Certain activities which are required when conducting a business may involve the use of your personal information. This could include internal processes (such as finance control, accounting, stock management, production management, internal or external audit), certain legal obligations (for example, record-keeping).
• We may also conduct various business-related analytics & market research activities, which may require us to access or otherwise use some of your personal information, or to send you surveys or customer satisfaction questions in order to gather new or additional information. This notably enables us to analyse and learn how our customers use and interact with us in order to improve products, services and our business in general.
• We will use your personal information to manage our relationship with you and to perform our obligations under the contract you conclude with us when you purchase or otherwise request products or services from us. This can cover various activities such as internal accounting, processing your payment or delivery.
• When you interact with us, either online or in person, you may share with us your personal information when:
• You buy a product or subscribe to a service;
• You create a Sause profile, join our loyalty scheme, participate in a contest, join a reward program or link your social media account to your Sause profile;
• You subscribe to our newsletter; 
• You interact with us or seek advice and share personal information through our websites, our social media pages, at a trade show, at events or through our customer services;
• You use your device to browse activity across different websites.
• You may not always be required to provide us with the personal information that we are asking you for. Any personal information that is required is clearly marked as mandatory must be shared in order to process your requests. When you do not wish to share certain personal information with us, you may simply not provide it to us, or opt-out of the processing of your personal information when this option is offered to you.
• Our general approach is to retain your personal information only for as long as it is needed.
• When you have a Sause profile, a potential customer profile or subscribe to our newsletters, we generally retain your personal information for 5 years from the last interaction you initiated with us.
• When you interact with our customer services, we generally retain the recordings of the calls for 45 days (unless a longer retention period is required by law), and the other personal information you have shared with us (including personal information shared by mail, chat or text message or when our interaction is transcribed) for 5 years from the last interaction you initiated with us.
• When we use cookies or other online advertising technologies, your consent shall only be valid for a maximum period of 13 months.
• We may retain personal information for a shorter or longer time, for instance, where we are obliged to do so in accordance with relevant legal, tax and accounting requirements.
• Last interaction shall be defined as the last contact you initiated which is traceable by our systems or by a sales associate. Last contact could be the last time a call, sales email, or meeting was proposed to you and to which you responded favourably. For instance, clicking on a link included in an email (except for a link to unsubscribe from receiving marketing content), having a chat on our website are considered a last contact. Conversely, opening an email or visiting our website without logging in would not qualify as last contact.
• We will destroy your personal information without delay once it is no longer necessary (e.g., if the purposes of collection/use of the personal information have been accomplished, if the statutory retention period expires) in a way that prevents such personal information from being restored or recovered.
• Whenever personal information is passed between your device and our servers, we ensure that it is encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (“SSL”) and/or other security methods. We implement Hyper Text Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer (“HTTPS”) in order to protect your connection to our website. All your personal information is stored on secured servers. We conduct security and privacy protection training courses and tests on a regular basis to enhance our employees’ awareness of the importance of protecting personal information. We take commercially reasonable steps to make sure that our business partners and third-party service providers are able to protect your personal information. Our employees and those of our business partners and third-party service providers who have access to your personal information are subject to enforceable contractual obligations of confidentiality and specific contractual privacy provisions.
• In the event of a security incident resulting in any breach of personal information, as qualified by law, we have an emergency response plan in place to prevent the expansion of such security incidents. In addition, we will report such personal information breach to the relevant supervisory authority as required by applicable law and inform you via an appropriate channel as and where required by applicable law.
• Please also note that in order to keep your personal information secure, we may from time to time, have to reset your password. However, you should be aware that no service can be completely secure, and you play a key role in keeping your personal information safe.
• For the best possible protection of your personal information outside the limits of our control, your devices should be protected (e.g. by updated antivirus software) and your internet service providers should take appropriate measures for the security of personal information transmission over the network (e.g. with firewalls and anti-spam filtering). You accept the inherent security implications of interacting over the Internet and will not hold us or our partners responsible for any security incident or breach of personal information unless it is due to our negligence.
• If you have any concerns that your personal information has been put at risk, for example if someone could have found out your password, please contact us as soon as possible. We want to ensure that your personal information is always safely used and available to you, wherever you want to access it and for whatever reason you wish to use it.
• We may occasionally make changes to this privacy policy, for example to comply with new requirements imposed by applicable laws or technical requirements. We will post the updated privacy policy on our website. We therefore encourage you to review this page every so often. We may also notify you in case of material changes and, where required by applicable law, we will seek your consent to those changes.
• We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic data. We also share information on your use of our site with our social media, advertising, and analytics partners. You can read more about any of our purposes or the vendors that we use by clicking on ‘Cookie Settings.’ This preference centre is accessible at any time through the ‘Cookie Settings’ button located on every page.
• When you visit any website, it may store or retrieve information using your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. This information might be personal information about you, your preferences or your device and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to. The information does not usually directly identify you, but it can give you a more personalised web experience.
• A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website when visited by a user asks your browser to place on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and are called first party cookies. We also use third-party cookies which are cookies from a domain other than that of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing initiatives.
• Cookies are used for various purposes, such as allowing the user to navigate between pages seamlessly, implementing the user’s preferences and improving their overall browsing experience, by customising the website according to their navigation and user profile as a Sause customer. They can also help ensure that the adverts seen online by the user are more relevant to them and their interests.
• Our website uses several types of cookie which have different durations.
• If you have any questions regarding our privacy practices or how we handle your data, please contact our privacy team and Data Protection Officer by sending an email to operations@hosause.com.