Companion Agreement

1. Who this agreement is between

This Companion Agreement is between:

• Vauxer Enterprises Private Limited, CIN U46901OD2023PTC044064, registered at Office 14, Ground Floor, Tower A, Startup Odisha (O-HUB), SEZ Road, Chandaka Industrial Estate, Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751024 (“DUNE”, “we”, “us”), which operates the DUNE platform; and
• you, the individual accepting this agreement in order to offer your time as a Companion.

Your agreement is with Vauxer, and Vauxer is what “DUNE”, “we” and “us” mean throughout this document.

DUNE is a product of Vauxer Enterprises Private Limited. Vauxer operates the service, publishes the app, arranges for payments to be collected and disbursed through a third-party payment partner, and is responsible for your data — it is the company you deal with for everything.

Vauxer arranges your payouts through our payment partner, and Vauxer is the only company you have an agreement with.

This agreement applies in addition to the DUNE Terms of Service, Privacy Policy, Code of Conduct and Community Guidelines, all of which continue to apply to you as a User. Where this agreement and the Terms of Service genuinely conflict on something specific to being a Companion, this agreement governs.

2. In short

Before the detail, the shape of the arrangement:

3. Eligibility and verification

To offer time as a Companion you must:

• be at least 18 years old;
• have completed our face and liveness verification before accepting any Booking. We do not currently ask for a government identity document;
• hold one DUNE account only — we enforce this by checking your face against existing accounts, and duplicate accounts are removed;
• be legally entitled to earn income in India and to provide the services described here;
• provide your PAN and accurate payout details — your own bank account number and IFSC code — and complete onboarding and KYC with our payment partner, Razorpay, before any money can reach you. We collect your PAN and bank details as soon as you switch on Companion mode, and we verify that they match before you can engage in your first Booking Session;
• not be using a rooted, jailbroken, or otherwise tampered or suspicious device to access DUNE.

A complete profile does not make you payout-ready. Verification and payout onboarding are separate steps, and Bookings cannot be paid out until both are done.

Your payout details must be your own. If you provide a bank account belonging to someone else, you accept full responsibility for that choice, and we will not entertain any dispute, refund claim, or payment-related complaint arising from it. Where we identify a rooted, jailbroken, or otherwise suspicious device associated with your account, we reserve the right to immediately suspend or delete your account, without prior warning or notice.

4. Your status — independent, not employed

You are an independent individual providing services on your own account. Nothing in this agreement creates an employment relationship, a partnership, a joint venture, or an agency between you and DUNE.

In particular:

• You choose which requests to accept and may decline any request for any lawful reason.
• You choose when you are available, and there is no minimum or maximum amount of time you must offer.
• You are not entitled to employment benefits — salary, provident fund, gratuity, paid leave, notice, or severance.
• You are responsible for your own taxes, your own equipment, and your own travel.
• You may provide similar services elsewhere, including on other platforms. We do not ask for exclusivity.

What we do control, stated honestly: DUNE sets the price for all Bookings, defines the available durations and Activity categories, decides how profiles are ranked in discovery, and enforces the Code of Conduct. These are conditions of using the Platform, not direction of how you conduct a Session.

5. How a Booking works, and who contracts with whom

DUNE acts as an intermediary. The contract for the companionship you provide is directly between you and the Requester — DUNE is not the party paying you for your time, and is not the party you are supplying the companionship to. What DUNE does is provide the platform that connects you, and arrange for the Requester’s payment to be collected and your share disbursed to you through our third-party payment partner.

DUNE charges the Requester a Platform Fee on top of your price, for this matchmaking and facilitation service, and that fee belongs to DUNE, not to you. We remain the Requester’s — and your — point of contact for support and for facilitating the resolution of disputes about a Booking, but we do this as the platform connecting you, not as a party to the companionship contract itself. You should not agree separate commercial terms with a Requester outside what is arranged through the Platform.

The lifecycle, and your part in it:

• A Requester selects an Activity, a duration, a date, a time and a meeting area, and sends you a request.
• You have 10 minutes to accept. Declining costs nothing.
• Once you accept, the Requester has 5 minutes to pay. If they don’t, the Booking lapses and your time is released.
• On payment the Booking is confirmed and in-app chat unlocks.
• At the meetup, the Session begins when the start PIN is verified, and ends when the close PIN is verified.
• A 2-hour dispute window follows, during which either User may raise an issue. If none is raised, your payout is settled T+2 business days after the window closes, excluding bank holidays and other holidays. If an issue is raised, our internal team reviews it before any payout is processed.

Only accept a request you intend to keep. Accepting is a commitment — the Requester pays immediately and arranges their day around it. See section 10.

6. What you commit to

• Turn up, at the agreed place and time, for the duration booked.
• Do the Activity that was booked. If plans change and you both genuinely want that, fine. If one of you is pushing and the other is going along to avoid awkwardness, that is not agreement.
• Keep it platonic, without exception. DUNE is not a dating platform and not a platform for sexual services. Offering, requesting, hinting at or negotiating sexual activity — in a profile, a message, an Event listing or in person — results in permanent removal on a first occurrence.
• Verify the start and close PINs in person, with the Requester, at the time. Never in advance, never over chat.
• Follow the Code of Conduct and Community Guidelines in full. They are part of this agreement.
• Keep your profile honest — recent photos that are genuinely you, an accurate age, and an Activity list you would actually turn up for.
• Conduct yourself lawfully and safely, and comply with any law that applies to what you are doing.

We recommend keeping location switched on during a Session. It is never required and the PIN always works without it — but if there is later a disagreement about whether a meeting happened, being able to show you were there puts you in a far stronger position.

7. Pricing — set by DUNE

DUNE sets the price for every Booking. You cannot set your own rate, negotiate a different rate with a Requester, offer a discount, or charge for anything additional.

Prices may change, and any change applies to Bookings made after the change. Bookings already confirmed are unaffected.

DUNE’s Platform Fee — the commission we retain from each Booking — is not a fixed percentage and may change at our discretion, without advance notice. Where we change it, we notify you by push notification. The rate that applies to a given Booking, for both your payout and any refund on it, is the rate in effect at the time that Booking was made — not the rate in effect later, when the Session completes or the payout is processed. You can check the current rate at any time via the ⓘ icon on your profile, under “How DUNE works.”

Each party pays their own costs at a meetup — food, drinks, tickets and travel — unless the two of you agree otherwise between yourselves. Anything you agree that way is outside this agreement and outside DUNE’s payment system, and we take no part in it.

8. What you are paid, and when

You receive the listed Booking value, less DUNE’s Platform Fee, less Tax Collected at Source (TCS) and any tax deducted at source. The Platform Fee rate is not fixed — see section 7 for how it is set and how to check the current rate.

GST applies only to DUNE’s Platform Fee, not to your share of a Booking. It is collected from the Requester at checkout and paid to the government by DUNE. It is not part of your earnings and is not deducted from them. See section 9 for the separate TCS and TDS deductions that do apply to your share.

Timing. A 2-hour dispute window follows the Session close, during which either User may raise an issue. If no issue is raised, your payout is settled T+2 business days after the window closes, excluding bank holidays and other holidays. If an issue is raised, our internal team reviews it before your payout is processed.

When a payout can be held back. We may withhold or reverse a payout where:

• the Booking is disputed, until the dispute is resolved;
• we reasonably suspect fraud or a fabricated Booking;
• a Code of Conduct breach relating to that Booking is under investigation.

We will tell you why, and give you an opportunity to respond. Where an investigation clears you, the payout is released in full.

Earnings already properly earned are still paid even if your account is later suspended or closed — except where the earnings arise from the breach itself, such as fabricated Bookings or payments obtained dishonestly.

9. Tax

You are responsible for your own taxes. DUNE does not withhold income tax on your behalf beyond the deductions described below, and does not file income tax returns for you.

• As the platform facilitating your payout, we collect 1% Tax Collected at Source (TCS — 0.5% CGST + 0.5% SGST) on your share of each Booking under Section 52 of the CGST Act, and remit it to the government via GSTR-8. You can claim this back as a credit against your own GST liability, if any.
• Tax deducted at source (TDS) also applies to your payouts under section 194-O of the Income-tax Act, at 0.1%, since we hold a valid PAN for you from the time you switch on Companion mode. The same PAN is used for both TCS and TDS purposes.
• When we collect your PAN. We collect your PAN, along with your bank account number and IFSC code, when you switch on Companion mode. We verify that they match before you can engage in your first Booking Session. There is no earnings threshold — PAN is required from the start, not once your lifetime earnings reach a particular level.
• We will make TCS and TDS certificates available to you for what we deduct or collect.
• Income tax on your earnings is yours to declare and pay.
• GST on your own share of a Booking is yours to consider if your own turnover crosses the registration threshold. Most Companions will not, but it is your responsibility to know, and we cannot advise you on it.

10. If you cancel, or don’t turn up

If you cancel a Booking you accepted, after the Requester has paid:

• You receive nothing for that Booking.
• The Requester is refunded the amount they paid, less DUNE’s Platform Fee at the rate that applied when the Booking was made.
• The cancellation is recorded.

If you do not turn up, the same applies.

If the Requester does not turn up, you are still paid your full share. You set aside the time and travelled; that is not your fault.

If a Session ends early by mutual agreement, it is treated as completed and you are paid in full. The full position is set out in our Cancellation & Refund Policy.

Repeated cancellation

One cancellation is not a problem. Emergencies happen, and nothing here is aimed at someone whose plans genuinely fell apart.

We record every Booking cancelled after payment. Where the record shows a pattern of accepting Bookings and then cancelling them, we will review your account — we do not need a Requester to report it, and we take reports into account where they exist.

Following that review we may take no action, issue a warning, suspend your account for between 3 and 30 days, or close it permanently. What we weigh is the pattern, the notice you gave each time, your reasons, and your history — not a fixed number of cancellations.

If you are not confident you can make it, decline the request. Declining costs nobody anything.

11. Your photos, your profile, and what you licence to us

You keep ownership of everything you upload.

You grant DUNE a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, reproduce, resize, adapt and display your profile photos, bio, Activity list and other profile content, for the purpose of operating and promoting the Platform, for as long as your account is active.

• This licence ends when your content is deleted, except for copies retained in backups until they expire, and copies we must keep for a legal or safety reason.
• You confirm that you own or have the right to use everything you upload, that it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, and that any other identifiable adult appearing in it has agreed to appear.
• We may remove content that breaches the Community Guidelines, and we screen uploads before they go live.

Marketing use beyond the Platform — advertisements, social media, press — requires your separate, specific consent, which you may withdraw. We will not use your face to advertise DUNE because you signed this.

12. Confidentiality, and other people’s information

Through Bookings you will learn things about Requesters — their name, where they live or work, their plans, and whatever they choose to tell you.

• Do not disclose it to anyone, and do not post it anywhere.
• Do not record a Session — audio, video or photographs of a Requester — without their explicit agreement at the time.
• Do not share screenshots of conversations or profiles outside the app.
• Do not contact a Requester through channels they did not give you, or after they have blocked you.
• Do not use anything you learn for any purpose other than delivering the Booking.

These obligations continue after this agreement ends.

13. Data

DUNE processes your personal data as described in the Privacy Policy, including your identity verification records, payout details and Booking history.

Two points specific to Companions:

• Payout data goes to our payment partner, Razorpay, who is responsible for its own KYC and holds it under its own terms.
• Requester data is not yours to keep. You are given access to it to deliver a Booking, not as a list to retain. Section 12 applies.

14. Conduct, and what happens when it goes wrong

The Code of Conduct applies to you in full and forms part of this agreement.

Depending on what happened and what your history shows, we may remove content, issue a warning, restrict features, withhold a payout under section 8, suspend your account for between 3 and 30 days, or close it permanently.

Zero-tolerance matters — sexual solicitation, violence or threats, anything involving a minor, or serious dishonesty — result in permanent closure on a first occurrence, and we report unlawful conduct to the authorities.

A temporary suspension does not forfeit anything you have paid, and payouts you have already earned are still released. Only permanent closure for breach triggers the forfeiture rules in Terms section 18.

You will be told which rule is in question and given an opportunity to respond, except where that would compromise a safety investigation, and you may appeal to support@dunexplore.com. A different person reviews the appeal from the one who made the decision.

15. Your responsibility, and indemnity

You are responsible for your own conduct. DUNE does not supervise Sessions and is not present at them.

You will indemnify DUNE — and its directors, employees and agents — against any claim, liability, loss, damage or expense, including reasonable legal costs, arising from:

• your breach of this agreement, the Terms, or the Code of Conduct;
• your conduct toward any Requester or other User, during a Session or otherwise;
• any injury, loss or damage you cause;
• any content you upload;
• any tax liability that is properly yours;
• any claim that you were an employee where this agreement says you are not.

This does not apply to anything caused by DUNE’s own breach or negligence.

16. Insurance

DUNE does not insure you. You are not covered by any DUNE policy for injury, illness, loss or liability arising from a Session.

You are responsible for deciding whether to arrange your own cover. We recommend you consider it.

If a Requester misbehaves or causes a nuisance during a Booking, that is not DUNE’s responsibility, and we are not financially or legally liable for it — we do not compensate you for it. This follows from the fact that we do not conduct background checks and do not supervise Sessions. You can still report it under the Code of Conduct, and we will review the report and may take action against the Requester’s account, but reviewing a report does not amount to DUNE accepting liability or paying compensation.

17. Suspension, termination, and leaving

You may stop at any time. Switch off Companion mode, or delete your account in the app. Bookings you have already accepted must still be honoured, or cancelled — and section 10 applies to any you cancel.

We may suspend or end this agreement where you breach it, where we reasonably suspect fraud or unlawful activity, where the law requires it, or to protect other Users.

On termination:

• Bookings already confirmed are cancelled, and Requesters are refunded.
• Payouts already properly earned are still released, less any amounts properly deducted, once any investigation concludes.
• Sections 9 (tax), 12 (confidentiality), 15 (indemnity) and 19 (disputes) survive.

Ending this agreement does not by itself close your DUNE account. You may stop being a Companion and continue using DUNE to book others and attend Events — unless your account itself has been closed for a breach.

18. Changes to this agreement

We may change this agreement. Where a change materially affects your payment, your obligations or your liability, we will give you 30 days’ notice in the app or by email.

Continuing to accept Bookings after a change takes effect means you accept it. If you do not, stop accepting Bookings and tell us.

Bookings already confirmed are governed by the version in force when they were confirmed.

19. Disputes, grievances and governing law

Talk to us first — support@dunexplore.com, or in-app support. Most things are resolved there.

Grievance Officer. , Grievance Officer, grievance@dunexplore.com, Office 14, Ground Floor, Tower A, Startup Odisha (O-HUB), SEZ Road, Chandaka Industrial Estate, Bhubaneswar, Odisha 751024. We acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and aim to resolve them within 15 days.

Governing law. This agreement is governed by the laws of India. Subject to any arbitration provision in the Terms of Service, the courts at Bhubaneswar, Odisha have exclusive jurisdiction.

Nothing here prevents you from approaching a consumer forum, a labour authority, or the Data Protection Board.

20. General

• Entire agreement — this agreement, together with the Terms, Privacy Policy, Code of Conduct and Community Guidelines, is the whole of what is agreed between us about being a Companion.
• Severability — if any part is found unenforceable, the rest continues.
• No waiver — not enforcing something once does not mean we give up the right to enforce it later.
• Assignment — you may not transfer this agreement. We may transfer it to a group company or a successor.
• Notices — we contact you through the app or at the email on your account. Keep it current.