Terms & Conditions

Version 2026-08-04 — Last updated: 4 August 2026

These terms govern your use of PrepDine. By creating an account or placing an order, you agree to them. Please read section 2 in particular — it explains who you are actually buying food from.

1. Who we are

PrepDine is a campus food pre-ordering platform. It is operated by Movva Chenna Kesav, contactable at Flat No. 201, Lakshmi Narayana Enclave, Sandipani Nagar, Yendada, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh – 530045 and at team@prepdine.com.

In these terms, "PrepDine", "we" and "us" mean the operator. "You" means the person using the platform. "Vendor" or "stall" means the independent food business selling through PrepDine.

2. What PrepDine is, and what it is not

The vendor sells the food. PrepDine provides the software.

• Every stall on PrepDine is an independent food business. The stall is the seller. The contract to supply food is between you and that stall, not between you and PrepDine.
• PrepDine provides the platform on which you find the stall, place your order, and collect it. We are not a restaurant, a food business, a delivery service, or a reseller of food.
• The stall is solely responsible for the food: its preparation, quality, safety, hygiene, ingredients, allergens, temperature, and its compliance with the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. Each stall holds its own FSSAI registration or licence. A stall is not shown to students on PrepDine unless its FSSAI details are on record.
• Menu items, descriptions, prices, availability, and preparation times are set and maintained by the stall.

2.1 Money — PrepDine does not hold your funds

This is the important part, and it is deliberate.

• When you pay for an order, your payment goes directly into the stall's own payment account, held by the stall with our payment provider, Cashfree Payments.
• PrepDine does not receive, collect, pool, hold, or route your money at any point. We have no customer funds account. We are not a payment aggregator and we do not act as one.
• The stall is the merchant of record for your payment.
• PrepDine's platform fee is charged to you as a separate, clearly displayed line at payment. It is settled between the stall and PrepDine afterwards, as described in section 7. It is never taken out of the stall's food price.

3. Your account

• At signup you must confirm that you are 18 or older, or that a parent or guardian has agreed to your use of PrepDine. Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, anyone under 18 is a child, and a parent or guardian must consent before their personal data is processed. See section 9 of our Privacy Policy. You can browse stalls, menus, prices, and availability without an account.
• One account per person. Your email address is your identity on PrepDine and can be used for only one student account.
• Provide accurate information and keep your password confidential. You are responsible for activity on your account.
• Your display name is shown to the stall you order from, so they know whose order to hand over. Use a name you're comfortable with a stall seeing.
• Tell us at support@prepdine.com if you think someone else has access to your account.
• You may delete your account at any time from your settings. See our Privacy Policy for exactly what happens to your data.

4. How ordering works

PrepDine uses accept-before-pay. You are not charged until the stall has confirmed it can make your order.

1. Request. You build a cart and choose a pickup slot. Submitting creates an order request. No money moves.
2. Acceptance. The stall has a short window to accept or decline. If it does not respond in time, the request lapses automatically and nothing is charged.
3. Payment. Once accepted, you have 5 minutes to pay. If you do not pay in that window, the order expires and your slot is released. Nothing is charged.
4. Preparing. Payment confirmed, the stall begins your order.
5. Ready. You are notified when your food is ready to collect.
6. Collection. You show your pickup code or QR at the counter. The stall verifies it and hands over your order.

4.1 Pickup slots

• You choose a pickup window. Each window has limited capacity per stall, and full windows are shown as unavailable. The app shows the actual times available.
• If your slot fills between checkout and payment confirmation, we will assign you the next available slot and tell you clearly. If you would rather not go ahead, simply do not pay — the order expires on its own and nothing is charged.
• A stall may give an estimated ready-by time within your slot. This is the stall's honest forecast, not a guarantee, and it does not change your slot.

4.2 Your pickup code

• Each order has a 4-digit pickup code and a QR code. These are proof of collection. Anyone presenting them can collect your order.
• Do not share your pickup code. If someone else collects your order using your code, we cannot recover it for you.
• For your security, the pickup code can only be entered a limited number of times. If the limit is reached, the stall will need help from PrepDine to complete your order.

5. Cancellations, refunds and no-shows

Please read this section before you pay. It is displayed again at the payment screen.

5.1 Before you pay

• Nothing is charged until you complete payment. If you decide not to go ahead, simply do not pay — the order expires on its own, your slot is released, and no money moves.
• After you pay, orders cannot be cancelled. The stall accepted your order and has begun cooking. This protection is the basis on which stalls agree to accept before payment.
• If you have a genuine problem with a paid order, use Report a payment issue in the app.

5.2 When you get a refund

You are refunded in full if:

• the stall declines your order after you have paid (rare, but possible if an item runs out);
• the stall cannot fulfil your order and cancels it;
• your order expires or is cancelled by the system before the stall begins preparing.

Refunds are approved and paid manually by the PrepDine team. We will contact you to arrange the transfer and confirm where it should go. Once a refund is approved, we transfer it within 2–3 working days. How long it then takes to appear depends on your bank. Your order will show a refund reference once processed.

5.3 No-shows

• If you do not collect your order within 20 minutes of it being marked Ready, the stall may mark it as a no-show. You will be warned in the app at 10 and 15 minutes.
• A no-show is not refunded. The food was made and the stall cannot resell it. This is displayed at checkout.
• If you have a genuine reason for missing a pickup, you can submit it and the stall may waive the strike. The money is not affected either way.
• Three no-shows within 30 days will temporarily restrict your ability to place orders. You will be told when the restriction lifts.

6. Payment

• Payments are UPI only. Card, net banking, and wallet payments are not supported.
• Payment is processed by Cashfree Payments. Your UPI credentials are entered in Cashfree's own secure flow and are never seen or stored by PrepDine.
• The amount you pay is the food subtotal plus PrepDine's platform fee, both shown separately before you pay.
• The platform fee is 4% of the food subtotal, subject to a minimum of ₹2.00. There is no maximum. Promotional rates may apply and are shown in the app. Fee rates may change; the rate applied to your order is the one displayed at payment.

7. Terms for vendors

These additional terms apply if you operate a stall on PrepDine.

7.1 Your relationship with PrepDine

• You sell food directly to students. PrepDine is a technology platform and is not a party to that sale, not a reseller, and not your agent for the sale of food.
• You are solely responsible for your food and for holding and maintaining valid FSSAI registration or licence. Your stall will not be visible to students without FSSAI details on record. You must tell us if your registration lapses.
• You are responsible for your own tax compliance, including GST registration where applicable.
• You set your own menu, prices, availability, slot capacity, and operating hours.

7.2 Payments to you

• Students pay directly into your own Cashfree merchant account. You are the merchant of record.
• You receive 100% of your menu price on every order. PrepDine's fee is charged to the student on top and is never deducted from your food price.
• Cashfree's gateway charge is deducted from the amount deposited into your account. PrepDine absorbs this cost — the amount you owe PrepDine is reduced by exactly that charge, so you always keep your full menu price.
• Bank account details for settlement can be changed only with password re-entry and are verified before use. Every change triggers a security notification.

7.3 The platform fee you owe

The platform fee is 4% of the food subtotal, subject to a minimum of ₹2.00. There is no maximum. Promotional rates may apply and are shown in the app; the rate applied to an order is the one displayed at payment.

This is settled weekly, in arrears. PrepDine does not deduct it at the time of payment, because PrepDine never handles your money.

The amount you owe for a week is derived from your own Cashfree settlement records — it is the total deposited into your account, less the food subtotals of the orders in that period. PrepDine does not calculate a figure independently and does not estimate. Your portal shows the same records the amount is derived from, so you can check it yourself.

You mark each weekly payment as made in your vendor portal, and PrepDine confirms receipt. Both entries are recorded with references. Corrections are made by adding a reversing entry, never by editing history.

Your running balance and full transaction history are visible in your dashboard at all times, and are exportable. Any waivers are recorded as separate, labelled entries.

7.4 Your obligations

• Accept or decline order requests promptly, and only accept what you can actually make.
• Mark orders Ready honestly and promptly. Repeated failure to fulfil accepted orders may result in review or suspension.
• Handle student data you see through PrepDine — names, orders, pickup verification — only for fulfilling those orders.
• Staff accounts you create act under your responsibility.

8. What you may not do

You may not:

• create more than one account, or create an account for someone else;
• attempt to place, alter, or collect an order that is not yours, including by guessing pickup codes;
• misuse the free-text order note field for abusive, offensive, or unlawful content;
• attempt to interfere with, overload, reverse-engineer, or gain unauthorised access to the platform;
• use PrepDine for anything unlawful, or to harass any student, stall, or member of staff;
• scrape, copy, or reuse PrepDine's content or data without permission.

We may restrict, suspend, or close an account that breaches these terms, or where we reasonably suspect fraud or abuse. Where we do, we will tell you why unless we are legally prevented from doing so.

9. Availability of the service

• PrepDine is provided on an "as available" basis. We do not guarantee uninterrupted service and there may be downtime for maintenance or reasons outside our control.
• Live availability, preparation times, and ready-by estimates are provided by stalls and are indicative, not guaranteed.
• We may change, suspend, or discontinue features. We will give reasonable notice of significant changes where we can.

10. Our liability

• PrepDine is not liable for the food itself — including its quality, safety, allergens, or fitness — because we do not make or sell it. Claims about food are between you and the stall. If a stall's food has caused you harm, contact the stall, and please also tell us at support@prepdine.com.
• We are not liable for a stall's failure to prepare, fulfil, or hand over an order on time.
• Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, or for fraud.
• Subject to the above, our total liability to you for any order is limited to the amount you paid for that order.

11. Your data

Our handling of personal data is described in our Privacy Policy, which forms part of these terms. In summary: we collect what is needed to run your account and your orders, we do not advertise to you or track you, and you can export or delete your data from your account settings.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If we make a material change, we will tell you. The version and date at the top of this page always show the current version, and they change to the date of the update whenever we make one.

13. Contact

Our phone line is answered 9:00 AM – 10:00 PM IST, daily.

Grievance Officer
Jagadeesh Kumar Balina, FCA, CMA
Phone: 9966552896
Email: jagadeesh@vnv.ca
Address: D.No. 50-96-4/4, Office No. 101, KIMS (NRI) Hospital Road, Seethammadhara, B.S. Layout, Visakhapatnam – 530013

Appointed under the Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Complaints are acknowledged within 48 hours and resolved within 30 days.

14. Governing law and jurisdiction

These terms are governed by the laws of India. Any dispute arising from them is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

© PrepDine