LocalBus is a real-time public bus tracking service for Thiruvananthapuram, operated by VortexCones LLP. This page explains what we collect, from whom, and why — organized by the three people who use the app differently: passengers, drivers, and fleet owners.
What's collected depends entirely on which of the three roles you're using the app as.
The passenger map works with no login. We don't collect a name, phone number, or device identifier to show you live buses.
If you tap "nearest stop to you," the app asks your device for a one-time location fix to calculate walking distance. That calculation happens entirely on your phone — your location is never sent to our servers or stored anywhere.
Favourited routes, a pinned home stop, and your personal "on-time streak" history are stored locally on your device. We have no copy of this and no way to see it.
Collected when your fleet owner adds you, and verified via a one-time password (OTP) sent by SMS through our messaging provider, MSG91, when you first sign in.
While you have an active trip running, your phone reports its GPS position periodically so passengers can see the bus on the live map. This runs as a visible foreground service with a persistent notification — it is never collected in the background, and stops the moment you end the trip.
If you choose to accept tips, your UPI ID is shown to passengers so they can pay you directly. That payment goes straight from a passenger's UPI app to yours — we never touch, process, or hold the money.
A preset illustration you pick from a small built-in set. We don't accept or store uploaded photos.
Collected at sign-up and verified by OTP the same way as drivers, along with your business name and any branding you choose to add (logo colour, tagline, website).
Subscribing to a paid plan opens a payment flow run entirely by Razorpay, our payment processor. Your card and bank details go directly to Razorpay under its own security standards — LocalBus receives only a confirmation of whether payment succeeded, never the underlying financial details.
Vehicle registrations, routes, driver assignments, and trip history you enter to run your fleet.
We don't use anything collected here for advertising, and we don't sell data to anyone.
We use a small number of specialist services to run LocalBus, each of which only receives what it needs to do its job:
We don't share driver or owner data with other operators, and we don't share anything with data brokers or advertisers.
LocalBus is intended for general use by the public and fleet operators, and isn't directed at children. We don't knowingly collect data from children.
If we change what we collect or how we use it, we'll update the effective date at the top of this page. Continued use of LocalBus after a change means you accept the update.
Operator of LocalBus
Questions about this policy, or requests to delete your driver/owner account: support@vortexcones.com