Terms of service

These terms are the agreement between you and NavaTrix Digital Technologies LLP ("MentorBuild", "we", "us") covering your use of the MentorBuild platform. By creating an account you accept them. If you are accepting on behalf of an institution, you confirm you are authorised to bind it.

Please read section 3 carefully. It sets out what a mentor does and, just as importantly, what a mentor will not do.

1. What MentorBuild is

MentorBuild is a marketplace. We connect students and professionals who want to build a project with independent mentors who guide them through it, and we provide the workspace, escrow and dispute process that engagement runs on.

Mentors are independent contractors. They are not our employees, partners or agents, and we do not direct how they work. We act as an intermediary under the Information Technology Act, 2000 in respect of the content students and mentors exchange on the platform.

2. Eligibility and your account

• You must be at least 18 years old to use MentorBuild.
• The information you give us must be accurate, and you must keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for everything done through your account. Keep your password to yourself and tell us immediately if you think someone else has access.
• One person, one account. Do not create an account for someone else or let someone else use yours.
• Mentor accounts become active only after we have verified the professional experience claimed in the application.

3. Academic integrity — what a mentor does and does not do

This is the most important section in these terms, and breaching it is the fastest way to lose your account.

A mentor will:

• Help you scope your project and choose an approach.
• Review your work, explain why something does or does not work, and suggest how to improve it.
• Teach you the concepts and tools your project needs.
• Run live sessions in which you walk through your own work and defend your own decisions.

A mentor will not:

• Write your project, your code, your report or your dissertation for you.
• Sit an examination, viva, interview or assessment on your behalf.
• Produce work for you to submit as your own without your having built and understood it.

You are responsible for complying with your own institution's academic integrity rules. Those rules vary, and it is your job to check them before you engage a mentor. If you ask a mentor to do work you intend to pass off as your own, or a mentor offers to, we will terminate the account involved and may withhold payment and refuse a refund.

4. Payments, escrow and fees

• Project pricing is agreed between you and your mentor before work begins, based on the brief.
• Payments are taken through Razorpay and held in escrow. Funds reach the mentor only when you approve the delivered work, or when a dispute is resolved in the mentor's favour.
• MentorBuild charges the mentor a platform commission of 18% of the project fee, deducted at payout. The price you see as a student is the price you pay — commission is not added on top of it.
• Project pricing is adjusted by mentor availability (0.9x to 1.5x of the base price) and by how close your deadline is (1.0x to 1.5x), capped at twice the base price. Both adjustments are included in the price shown to you before you select a mentor.
• All amounts are in Indian Rupees and include applicable taxes unless stated otherwise. We issue an invoice for every transaction.
• Payouts are made to the verified bank account on the mentor's profile, normally within [payout window] business days of release.

Arranging payment outside the platform to avoid commission is a breach of these terms. It also removes every protection escrow gives you, so if it goes wrong we cannot help.

5. Delivery and approval

• You and your mentor agree milestones and a timeline at kickoff. We do not guarantee any particular delivery date — the timeline is between you and your mentor.
• When your mentor marks deliverables ready, you have the review window shown in your project workspace to review them and either approve or raise a dispute. If that window passes without you doing either, the work is treated as approved and payment is released. Your project workspace shows how long you have to review, and we email you when the clock starts.
• Approval is not a waiver. If you discover a genuine defect after approving, contact support and we will look at it.

6. Disputes

If you and your mentor cannot agree that the work is complete, either of you can raise a dispute from the project workspace. Escrow is frozen while a dispute is open.

• Both sides are asked for their account of what was agreed and what was delivered.
• We review the brief, the milestone log, the messages and the delivered files.
• We decide on a full refund, a partial release, or a full release to the mentor, and we explain the reasoning to both sides.
• We aim to decide as quickly as the evidence allows, and we keep you updated while it is open.

Our decision is made in good faith on the evidence in the workspace. It resolves the escrow contractually; it is not an arbitral award, and it does not remove any right you have under consumer protection law.

7. Content and intellectual property

• You keep ownership of what you create. Work a student produces belongs to the student; teaching material a mentor brings with them belongs to the mentor.
• You grant us a limited licence to host, display and back up your content so we can run the platform. That licence ends when you delete the content, except for copies we must retain under our privacy policy.
• Where a mentor contributes original material to a deliverable, the mentor grants the student a perpetual, royalty-free licence to use it as part of that project.
• The MentorBuild name, logo and platform are ours. Do not copy, scrape or reverse-engineer them.
• A public portfolio entry or case study naming you is published only with your consent, and you can withdraw it at any time.

8. What you must not do

• Breach the academic integrity rules in section 3.
• Take payment off-platform to avoid commission, or ask another user to.
• Harass, abuse, threaten or discriminate against another user. Our community guidelines set the standard.
• Upload malware, or content that is unlawful, infringing, obscene or that you do not have the right to share.
• Misrepresent your experience, employer, qualifications or identity.
• Attempt to breach the platform's security, access another user's account or data, or scrape the service.
• Post fake reviews, or offer anything in exchange for a review.

9. Suspension and termination

You can close your account at any time from settings. Any project already in progress runs to completion, or is resolved through the dispute process, first.

We can suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms. Where it is reasonable to do so we will warn you and give you a chance to explain; for serious breaches — fraud, a security attack, or a threat to another user's safety — we will act immediately. Money already held in escrow is resolved under section 6, not forfeited.

10. Disclaimers

MentorBuild is provided as-is. We do not promise the platform will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we do not guarantee any particular academic, career or employment outcome from using it. Mentorship improves your odds; it does not guarantee a grade, a placement or a job, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not speaking for us.

We verify a mentor's claimed professional experience before approving them. We do not otherwise supervise their work, and we are not responsible for the quality of the guidance any individual mentor gives — that is what escrow and the dispute process are for.

11. Limitation of liability

Nothing here limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019.

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for lost profit, data, goodwill or opportunity. Our total liability arising from any project is limited to the amount you paid us for that project.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights we will give you at least 14 days notice by email or in the platform. Continuing to use MentorBuild after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, you can close your account.

13. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of India, and the courts at [city], India have exclusive jurisdiction. Before starting proceedings, please contact us — most disagreements are settled faster by email than by litigation.

14. Contact