Who this is for

Mr Candidate is operated by Close the Gap Lab Foundation (CIN U88900MH2026NPL466527), a not-for-profit company registered under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013, with its registered office at 603, Kings Apartment, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai 400049, Maharashtra. Mr Candidate introduces young jobseekers ("Youth") in Mumbai to employers ("HR"). This policy explains what we collect from you, why, and what you can do about it, under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its 2025 Rules.

What we collect

If you create a Youth profile: your name, phone number, email, password, education level, school/college, year of passing, sector and skills, languages, neighbourhood, a short note on the work you're looking for, and (only if you choose to share them) past work experience or volunteering, and a resume file you upload. If you don't upload one, we generate one for you from these details. If you complete our background/work-readiness questionnaire, that assessment and any rating shown on your profile is also collected and shown to employers. If you think a rating is wrong, you can ask us to review it (see Grievance Redressal).

If you create an HR account: your name, phone, email, password, company name, industry, and city.

If you use "Let's talk" or "I'm interested": your name, organisation (if any), email, phone (where asked), and your message.

If you use "Connect via WhatsApp": this opens your own WhatsApp with a pre-filled message to our team containing the candidate's name, sector, and location, sent through WhatsApp (operated by Meta), not through Mr Candidate's own systems.

Why we collect it

• To build and show your profile to prospective employers, or to let you browse candidate profiles and reach out.
• To generate a resume automatically on your behalf.
• To notify our team and make an introduction when an employer expresses interest in you, and to stay in touch through your first day on the job and after.
• To respond to questions sent through our contact forms, and keep a record so we can follow up.
• With your separate, optional consent only: to feature your story, photo, or outcome in donor updates, impact reports, or social media. You can say no to this and still use the platform fully.

Where it's stored

Your account and profile data lives in Google Firebase (Firestore database), hosted in Google Cloud's asia-south1 (Mumbai) region: it stays in India. An uploaded resume file is stored in Firebase Storage. We also keep an internal backup system, operated only by our own team and not shared outside the organisation, as a safeguard against data loss. Email notifications about new signups and enquiries are sent via EmailJS, and the website itself is hosted on Vercel. Both operate outside India, so the details contained in those notifications and requests are processed outside India. Our typefaces are served by Google Fonts, which receives your IP address when a page loads. None of these providers may use your data for their own purposes. They process it only on our behalf.

Who sees what

Anyone visiting the site sees a masked version of each candidate profile: first name and last initial, city-level location only. Full names, exact neighbourhoods, and contact details are visible to any signed-in HR account. Your phone number and email are never shown on your public profile at all; they're only shared with a specific employer once an introduction is made.

How long we keep it, and what happens after you're placed

As long as your account is active. You can delete your account and profile yourself, any time, from your account page. This removes it immediately, not after a waiting period. If you'd rather have our team do it for you, contact us (see Grievance Redressal). If you haven't logged in for 24 months, we may reach out before removing an inactive profile, giving at least 48 hours' notice first. Once you're placed in a job, your profile comes down from public browsing; we may keep a record of the placement and any employer feedback for our own reporting, and you can ask to see what's recorded about you.

Applicants under 18

You must be 18 or older to create a Youth profile on Mr Candidate. The sign-up form asks for your date of birth and will not create a profile for anyone under 18. We do this because we have no way to obtain and verify parental consent, which the law requires before a child's personal data can be processed. If you are under 18 and looking for work, please contact the team. We may still be able to help you in other ways.

Access logs

We keep records of access to our systems (who signed in, when, and what was changed) for at least one year, so that if something goes wrong we can establish what happened. These logs are kept by our hosting and database providers and are not used for any other purpose.

Your rights

• Access: ask what we hold about you, and who it's been shared with.
• Correction, completion, and updating: you can edit most of this yourself from your account; contact us for anything you can't.
• Erasure: ask us to delete your account and data.
• Withdraw consent: for anything you gave consent for, including the optional donor/impact-report use.
• Nominate: name someone who can exercise these rights on your behalf if you die or become incapacitated.

HR users have these same rights over their own account data.

If something goes wrong

If we become aware of a personal data breach affecting you, we will notify you and the Data Protection Board of India without delay, and provide the Board with a detailed report within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. There's no minimum severity threshold for this: every breach gets reported, not just the serious ones. The Mr Candidate team is responsible for making that report; you can reach them at pehlikamaitm@gmail.com.

Mr Candidate is free for youth

Cookies and your browser's local storage

We don't use advertising cookies or cross-site trackers, and we don't build a profile of you or sell your browsing behaviour. The site keeps a cached copy of your account in your browser's local storage, purely so you're not signed out unexpectedly. This stays on your device and is necessary for accounts to work.

Separately, and only with your permission, we count anonymous page visits using Vercel Web Analytics so we can see which parts of the site are useful. It sets no cookies and doesn't identify you. It is off unless you switch it on, and if you decline, the script is never loaded at all. You can change your answer at any time. See Cookies & local storage for the detail and the switch.

Security

Passwords are held only by Firebase Authentication, hashed and never visible to us. We use established providers for storage and take reasonable steps to protect your data. No online system is completely secure, and we don't claim otherwise.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes in a way that affects how we use your data, we'll post the update here with a new version number and date.

Questions or concerns

See Grievance Redressal.

The short version

Mr Candidate sets no advertising cookies and no cross-site trackers. We don't sell or share your browsing behaviour, and we don't build a profile of you. There are only two things we store, and one of them is entirely your choice.

1. Keeping you signed in: always on

If you create an account or sign in, we keep a cached copy of your session in your browser's local storage. This is what stops you being logged out every time you move between pages. It stays on your own device, we can't read it remotely, and it isn't used to follow you anywhere.

This is strictly necessary for accounts to work at all, so it isn't something we ask permission for. Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, storage that's essential to deliver a service you asked for doesn't require separate consent. If you'd rather we didn't store it, don't sign in; you can browse candidate profiles without an account. Clearing your browser data removes it, and signing out removes it immediately.

2. Anonymous visit counts: off unless you say yes

We'd like to know which parts of the site are actually useful: how many people reach the candidate list, whether anyone finds the training pages. For that we use Vercel Web Analytics, and only if you switch it on.

What it does: counts page views and which links get clicked. What it does not do: set cookies, track you across other websites, record your name, email or IP address in a way that identifies you, or build an advertising profile. It's aggregate counting, not surveillance.

It is off by default. If you chose "Reject", the analytics script is never downloaded at all: not loaded-then-disabled, simply never requested. Your choice is stored on your device so we don't ask again.

Changing your mind

You can switch analytics on or off whenever you like, and your earlier answer isn't binding.

Review my cookie choices →

You can also clear site data in your browser settings, which erases both your session and your stored preference. The next visit will ask again.

Third parties that load on this site

A few external services are needed for the site to function. None of them are advertising networks:

• Google Firebase (Google LLC): accounts, sign-in, the candidate database and file uploads. Stores your session on your device as described above.
• Vercel: hosting, and the optional analytics described above.
• EmailJS: delivers messages you send through our contact and interest forms.
• Google Fonts (fonts.googleapis.com and fonts.gstatic.com): serves the typefaces the site is set in. Loading a font sends your IP address and browser details to Google. No cookie is set and nothing is stored on your device.
• Google (gstatic.com): delivers the Firebase code the site runs on, from the same network.
• jsDelivr: serves two open-source display libraries used by the site's graphics.

If you click "Connect via WhatsApp", that opens WhatsApp (operated by Meta) on your own device. Anything that happens there is covered by Meta's terms, not ours.

Questions

This page sits alongside our Privacy Policy, which covers everything else we collect and your rights over it. If something here is unclear or you think we've got it wrong, please raise it through Grievance Redressal.

What Mr Candidate is

Mr Candidate, operated by Close the Gap Lab Foundation, introduces young jobseekers to employers in Mumbai. We're a facilitator (not an employer, staffing agency, or recruiter) and we don't guarantee that any Youth user will be hired, or that any HR user will find a suitable candidate.

Who can use it

You must be 18 or older to create a Youth profile on Mr Candidate. Employers creating an account confirm they're representing a genuine, lawful hiring need, on their own behalf or their organisation's, and agree to our review of their account before full access unlocks.

Your account

Keep your password to yourself. You're responsible for what happens under your account, and should tell us if you think someone else has access to it.

Keep it accurate

Whatever you put in your profile or listing should be true. We can remove profiles or accounts that contain false, misleading, or inappropriate content, including a candidate profile if a candidate has misrepresented themselves to an employer.

How an introduction works

When an employer expresses interest, Mr Candidate facilitates the introduction. What happens after that (interviews, an offer, the terms of any job) is between the Youth applicant and the employer directly. Mr Candidate isn't a party to that relationship.

Your content

You own whatever you submit: your profile details, and any resume file you upload. Submitting it lets Mr Candidate show it to prospective employers on the platform, and generate a formatted resume from it if you don't upload your own. If you upload a file, please don't include ID numbers such as Aadhaar or PAN. We don't ask for these and can't control what a resume file you provide might contain.

For employers

• Candidate details you access may be used only to assess that candidate for the specific role you're hiring for, not added to your own recruitment database, shared with other recruiters, or retained beyond 90 days after your hiring decision.
• You may never charge a candidate any fee or deposit, or ask them to surrender original documents. This is a firm condition of using Mr Candidate, not a suggestion.
• We do not tolerate discrimination based on where a candidate is from, their accent, their pin code, or their board of education. Accounts found doing this will be removed.
• You confirm any vacancy you post or discuss is genuine and lawful.
• We may suspend or revoke your access for breaching these terms, and you agree to indemnify us for any loss arising from your misuse of candidate data.

Please don't

• Post a fake job or a fake candidate profile.
• Harass or misrepresent yourself to anyone you're introduced to.
• Scrape or copy data from the site.
• Use the platform for anything other than genuine hiring or job-seeking.

No guarantees

The site is provided as-is. Close the Gap Lab Foundation isn't responsible for hiring outcomes, an employer's conduct, or anything exchanged after an introduction is made.

If these terms are broken

We can suspend or remove an account that violates these terms.

Other links, and if part of this doesn't hold up

We're not responsible for the content of third-party sites we link to. If a court finds any part of these terms unenforceable, the rest still stands. Neither of us is responsible for a failure to perform caused by something genuinely outside our control.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, with courts in Mumbai having jurisdiction.

Changes

We may update these terms; using the site after an update means you accept it.

Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and as a matter of good practice, Mr Candidate provides a way to raise concerns about how your personal data is collected or used, or about something that felt wrong on the platform.

How to reach us

For any issue or assistance (a question about your data, something an employer did, or anything that felt wrong), send us a message or write to us at pehlikamaitm@gmail.com. You will not lose access to the platform for reporting something.

Send us a message →

What happens next

• You will get an acknowledgement with a reference number within 2 business days.
• We aim to resolve it within 30 days, well inside the statutory ceiling of 90 days for grievance resolution.
• Every grievance is logged internally with its response and closure date, so there is a record if it is ever needed.
• If you are not satisfied with our response, you can escalate to the Data Protection Board of India, which has been constituted and is accepting complaints.

Mr Candidate is built for you. We are a bridge connecting youth (especially those without formal networks or privileged backgrounds) directly with employers. Your background does not define your potential. We help you present your real skills and prepare you to succeed.

For Candidates

Getting Started

Interview Preparation

Skill Development

For HR Companies

General Support

Privacy & Safety