Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

This policy explains what personal data Emerging Scholars Council collects, why, who can see it, how long we keep it, and what rights you have. It forms part of our Terms of Service.

1. Who Is Responsible for Your Data

Emerging Scholars Council is the controller of your personal data. ESC is a sole proprietorship registered in India under Udyam Registration Number UDYAM-HR-08-0060567, with its place of business at Delhi, India. Its sole proprietor is Mr. Rajinder Singh.

For any privacy question or request, email info@emergingscholarscouncil.com.

2. What We Collect

Enquiry details — your name, email address, phone or WhatsApp number, country, field of study and the content of your message.
Booking details — when you book a discovery call, the name, email and any notes you enter into our scheduling tool.
Application materials — where you enrol in mentorship: your CV, academic transcripts, degree certificates, statement of purpose, research proposal, reference letters, publication list and test scores.
Correspondence — emails, WhatsApp messages and session notes.
Your portal account — if you enrol, we create a student portal account for you. It holds your profile, the documents you upload (CV, transcripts, drafts), the letters and applications you work on, your mentor's comments, your messages and voice notes, and a record of when you sign in. If you turn on notifications, your browser gives us a technical address to send them to.
Your signed agreement — when you sign your mentorship agreement in the portal, we keep the signed text, the date and time, and the IP address it was signed from, as a record of the contract.
Payment references — your invoice number, the amount, and confirmation of payment. Card and online payments are processed by Razorpay; we never see or store your card details or bank credentials. UPI payments made directly are handled by your own bank.
Website usage data — see clause 7.

3. Why We Use It, and On What Basis

To deliver mentorship you have enrolled in — necessary to perform our contract with you.
To answer your enquiry or hold a discovery call — at your request, before any contract exists.
To send you our newsletter and free resources — with your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
To keep financial and business records — to comply with our legal obligations in India.
To understand how our website is used — see clause 7.

The student portal includes an assistant that uses Google's Gemini AI to help answer your questions and to check drafts before your mentor reviews them. We use Google's paid service, under which Google does not use your content to train its models. Your mentor, not the software, gives you feedback and makes every recommendation. We do not make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects, and we do not profile you for advertising.

4. Who Can See Your Data

Your data is held in Emerging Scholars Council’s Google Workspace account, which is administered by Dr. Deepak Malik.

Where a mentor is assigned to you, that mentor is given access to the materials necessary to advise you — typically your CV, transcripts and draft application documents. All ESC mentors have agreed to confidentiality, data-handling and code-of-conduct terms before receiving any student information.

We use the following service providers, who process data on our behalf: Supabase (the student portal's database and file storage, on servers in Ireland, EU, and the PhD position board), Netlify (hosting for the website and the student portal), Google Workspace (email and document storage), Zoho (business email and invoicing), Razorpay (payment processing), Resend (emails sent by the student portal), Google Gemini (the portal assistant, on a paid plan — see clause 3), Sender.net (newsletter delivery), Cal.com (call scheduling), and Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity (website analytics).

We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for advertising purposes or with any third party outside Emerging Scholars Council and the providers listed above.

5. Where Your Data Is Held

Your data is stored on our service providers’ infrastructure, which is located outside India, and our mentors are based in nine countries across Europe, the UK, Australia, Canada and India. Your data may therefore be accessed from a country other than your own.

Where personal data of EEA or UK residents is transferred internationally, we rely on the standard contractual clauses and equivalent safeguards operated by our service providers.

6. How Long We Keep It

We keep student records, including application materials, for at least five years after your programme ends. This allows us to answer later questions, provide references, and meet our record-keeping obligations.

Enquiries that do not lead to enrolment are kept for up to two years. Newsletter data is kept until you unsubscribe.

You may ask us to delete your data earlier — see clause 10.

7. Cookies and Website Analytics

We use two analytics tools: Google Analytics 4, which tells us which pages are visited and how people arrive, and Microsoft Clarity, which produces anonymised heatmaps and interaction recordings so we can see where the site is confusing. Text entered into form fields is masked and is never uploaded.

If you are visiting from Europe, neither tool loads until you accept. You will see a short banner on your first visit; nothing is stored on your device and no data is sent until you choose. If you decline, the site works exactly as normal.

Outside Europe, these tools load by default, in line with local law.

You can change your choice at any time by clicking reopen analytics choice.

We do not use advertising cookies, retargeting pixels, or any social media tracking.

Site search and “Ask ESC”. When you use the search box, the words you type — and, for “Check my fit”, the answers you tap — are stored with our database host, Supabase, so we can see what students look for and improve our pages. We do not store your IP address and we do not link these entries to your name. A question you send to “Ask ESC” is passed to Google’s Gemini service, together with passages from our public pages, to write the short answer. Please do not type personal details into the box. We delete these entries after 12 months.

8. Marketing Emails

We send our newsletter and free resources only to people who have asked for them. Every email contains an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing takes effect immediately.

9. Photographs, Names and Admission Outcomes

Agreeing to share your admission outcome is part of joining ESC mentorship. After that, you can ask us at any time to remove your name or photograph from our website and social media, and we will. We may keep an anonymised outcome (for example, “a Microbiology student admitted to a funded PhD in Austria”) that does not identify you.

10. Your Rights

You can ask us to: give you a copy of the data we hold about you; correct anything inaccurate; delete your data, or, where we need to keep records, anonymise it so it no longer identifies you; restrict or object to how we use it; provide it in a portable format; or withdraw a consent you previously gave.

Email info@emergingscholarscouncil.com and we will respond within 30 days. There is no charge.

If you are in the EEA or UK and you believe we have handled your data improperly, you also have the right to complain to your national data protection authority.

11. Security

Student data is held in access-controlled accounts protected by two-factor authentication. You sign in to the portal with a one-time code sent to your email, so there is no password to steal. Your materials are shared with mentors on a need-to-know basis only. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect your information, and we will tell you promptly if a breach affects you.

12. Children

Our services are aimed at graduate and postgraduate applicants. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe we have, please contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to This Policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The date at the top of this page shows when it was last changed. If a change materially affects how we use your data, we will tell you directly.

14. Contact

Emerging Scholars Council, Delhi, India · info@emergingscholarscouncil.com