Terms of Service

Effective date: 19 October 2026. These Terms of Service are a binding agreement between you and Tern Communications Private Limited, a company incorporated in India with its registered office at Plot No. 9, AKMG Nagar, Dindigul 624001, Tamil Nadu, India, and its business address at 858-A, KCEE Manoharam, Panneerselvam Salai, Ashok Nagar, Chennai 600078, Tamil Nadu, India ("Tern", "we", "us"). They govern your use of the Tern AI platform at platform.ternai.tech, our website at ternai.tech, and every related application, API and feature (together, the "Service").

1. The agreement

1.1 By creating an account, accepting an invitation or using the Service, you agree to these Terms, our Privacy Policy and our Refund and Cancellation Policy (together, the "Agreement"). If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1.2 If you use the Service for an organisation (an enterprise, agency, brand, newsroom or similar), you confirm that you are authorised to bind it, and "you" includes that organisation.

1.3 The Service is for business and professional use.

1.4 If these documents conflict, the Refund and Cancellation Policy governs refunds and cancellation, the Privacy Policy governs personal data, and these Terms govern everything else. A written order form or agreement signed by Tern for your organisation prevails on the subjects it covers.

2. Eligibility and accounts

2.1 You must be at least 18 years old and able to enter a binding contract.

2.2 Access is by invitation or by sign-up with an email verification code. You must give accurate, complete and current information (name, work email, organisation, role) and keep it up to date. Some features, such as claiming a journalist profile or a newsroom, require a work email address on the relevant outlet or organisation's domain.

2.3 One person, one account. You must not share your login or invitation code, create accounts by automated means, create accounts on behalf of others without authority, or open more than one account to avoid limits, quotas or a suspension.

2.4 You are responsible for everything done through your account and for keeping your password secure. Tell us at info@ternai.tech as soon as you suspect unauthorised use. We are not liable for loss caused by your failure to protect your credentials.

2.5 On an organisation account, the organisation's administrators control membership, roles, seats, billing and what members can see. Administrators are responsible for their members, and we may act on an administrator's instructions. Members should expect that content shared inside the organisation's workspace may be visible to its administrators.

2.6 We may ask for proof of identity, employment or authority at any time. We may refuse, suspend or reclaim an account, profile or organisation where proof is missing, inconsistent or false.

3. Who the Service is for

3.1 The Service connects communications professionals (in enterprises, brands and agencies), journalists, editors and newsrooms, and influencers and content creators. Features and some terms differ by role.

3.2 If you are a communications professional or brand, you alone decide whom to contact and what to say, and you must use the Service only for relevant, professional outreach.

3.3 If you are a journalist, editor or creator, you decide what to respond to. Nothing in these Terms obliges you to reply to a pitch, join a campaign or accept a connection, and you control your availability settings.

3.4 Tern is a platform. We are not a publisher, a media agency, an employer, or a party to any arrangement between users (see Section 8).

3.5 If you are a creator or influencer: (a) you are responsible for following the advertising and disclosure rules for sponsored or collaborative content in every market where you publish, such as the ASCI guidelines in India, FTC rules in the United States and ASA and CMA rules in the United Kingdom, including clear labels such as #ad; (b) the follower, audience, engagement, rate and reach figures you give us must be accurate, and you must not use fake followers, purchased engagement or bots; (c) you own the content you create, and any licence to a brand comes from your agreement with that brand, not from Tern; (d) you are responsible for your own taxes and for the terms of the social platforms where you publish; and (e) you choose which brands and campaigns to accept, and Tern is not your agent or manager.

3.6 If you are a brand or agency running creator campaigns, you are responsible for your briefs, approvals and disclosure instructions, you must not ask creators to make false claims or to hide a sponsorship, and you must pay creators as you agree with them. Tern does not hold or guarantee that payment.

4. Changes to the Service and these Terms

4.1 We may add, change, limit or remove features, quotas and plans at any time. Features labelled beta, preview or early access are provided as is, may contain errors, and may change or end without notice.

4.2 We may update these Terms. For material changes we will give at least 14 days' notice by email or in the Service, unless a change is needed sooner to comply with law or protect security. If you keep using the Service after a change takes effect, you accept it. If you do not accept it, stop using the Service and cancel.

4.3 If we permanently withdraw a paid feature that you have prepaid for, and do not replace it with something materially similar, we will refund the part of your prepaid fee that relates to the period after the withdrawal.

5. Acceptable use

5.1 You must not, and must not help anyone else to:

• send unsolicited, irrelevant or mass communications to journalists, creators or other users, or pitch something that is not genuinely relevant to the recipient;
• impersonate any person, publication or organisation, or misstate your affiliation, credentials or authority;
• fabricate press releases, briefings, quotes, statistics, endorsements or verified credentials, or spread misinformation;
• harass, threaten, pressure or abuse anyone, or contact a person who has blocked you or asked not to be contacted;
• scrape, crawl, harvest, copy, export, store or resell data from the Service, including journalist and creator profiles and contact details, by manual or automated means, except through features we provide;
• use the Service or its data to build, train or improve a competing product, database or AI model;
• reverse engineer or decompile the Service, or circumvent quotas, rate limits, access controls or security measures;
• probe, scan or test the security of the Service without our written permission, or interfere with its operation or with other users;
• upload malware, or material that is unlawful, infringing, defamatory, obscene or deceptive;
• submit sensitive data the Service does not need, such as health records, government identification numbers, or payment card or bank account numbers, in messages, files or profiles;
• use the Service in breach of any law, including privacy, anti-spam, advertising, defamation, intellectual property, sanctions and export laws; or
• let anyone else do any of the above through your account.

5.2 We may set and change rate limits and quotas, review reports, remove content, restrict features, and suspend or end access if we believe this Section has been breached, without prior notice where the risk justifies it.

6. Messages, pitches and calls

6.1 Pitches, messages, files, calendar invitations and calls you send through the Service are your content and your responsibility. You must have the right to send them and must make sure they comply with every law that applies to you and to the recipient, including anti-spam and data protection laws. Tern does not give legal advice, and the Service is not designed to make your outreach compliant in any particular country.

6.2 Recipients can ignore, block or report you. We may rate-limit, review, hold or remove communications, and may share reports and relevant records with the recipient or with authorities where needed to deal with abuse or to comply with law.

6.3 Follow the laws on recording and monitoring. Do not record, transcribe or share any call or conversation without the consent the law requires from every participant.

6.4 Do not use the Service for legally privileged material or information that is subject to special secrecy rules. If you do, you accept the risk.

7. The media database, profiles and contact details

7.1 Tern maintains a database of journalist, creator and outlet profiles drawn from public sources, from information users give us, and from profiles that journalists and creators claim and manage themselves. Profiles that have not been claimed are created by Tern.

7.2 You may use the database only inside the Service, for genuine professional outreach to the person concerned. We decide what information is visible. Contact details such as email addresses may stay hidden until a connection exists, and some details are never shown.

7.3 The database is provided as is. It may be out of date or wrong, and we do not promise that any person covers a topic, can be reached, or wants to be contacted.

7.4 Do not copy, export, scrape, sell, share or compile database information outside the Service. You must handle anything you learn about a person lawfully and respect their stated preferences.

7.5 A journalist, creator or influencer can claim or correct their profile at any time, or ask for its removal, subject to verification (see the Privacy Policy, Section 5). Claiming requires verification, such as a work email address on the outlet's domain. We may refuse or reverse a claim or removal request that cannot be verified or is disputed.

7.6 Creator and influencer profiles may include public social media handles, follower and audience figures, content categories and, if the creator adds it, a rate card. Figures from public sources may be estimates or out of date, so do not rely on them for payment or contractual commitments.

8. No guaranteed outcomes; Tern is not a party to your dealings

8.1 We do not guarantee that any pitch will be read, answered or published, that any journalist, creator or outlet will respond, cover your story or collaborate, or that any campaign will meet your goals. Editorial decisions belong to journalists and outlets alone.

8.2 AI matches, rankings and suggestions are aids. They are not assurances of relevance, quality, safety or suitability.

8.3 Agreements between users, including campaigns, collaborations and Campaign Seat bookings, are solely between those users. For Campaign Seats, Tern provides only the connection, a Messenger thread, and related access and visibility features. Tern does not hold, process or guarantee campaign money, deliverables, deadlines, content quality, exclusivity or performance, and does not verify declared values, rates or reach figures supplied by users. Resolve disputes with the other party directly.

8.4 Nothing on the Service is legal, financial, investment, tax or other professional advice.

8.5 Creator Studio records campaigns, briefs, content links, approvals and declared values. Tern does not host published content, process payments between the parties, or verify the amounts users declare.

9. AI features

9.1 Some features (such as pitch drafting, matching, contact discovery, search, the Story Assistant and Content Hub writing tools) use artificial intelligence provided by third-party model providers. We send a provider only what a feature needs to produce its result.

9.2 AI output can be wrong, incomplete, biased, outdated, offensive or similar to other outputs. You must review, verify and edit it before relying on it, sending it or publishing it. You are solely responsible for what you send or publish, including facts, quotes, claims about people, and compliance with advertising and disclosure rules.

9.3 Do not use AI features to produce deceptive, defamatory, unlawful or infringing content, to impersonate anyone, or to generate spam. AI features are subject to the usage limits of your plan.

9.4 We may use content and activity data from the Service to train, test and improve Tern's own AI features, such as matching, ranking, search and writing assistance, and we de-identify the data first where practicable. We do not allow third-party AI providers to train their models on your content, and we do not use the contents of private messages and calls, or files you share only with named contacts, for this purpose. This applies to content submitted on or after the effective date of these Terms; earlier content is used only with your agreement. You can object at any time by emailing info@ternai.tech, and we will stop using your content for this purpose from then on.

9.5 As between you and Tern, you own the outputs you generate, to the extent the law allows. We do not promise that outputs are unique or free of third-party rights.

10. Plans and pricing

10.1 Plans, features, quotas and prices are shown on our pricing page at ternai.tech/pricing and in the Service at checkout. Prices exclude taxes unless the checkout shows otherwise.

10.2 Customers in India are billed in Indian rupees (INR) by Tern through Razorpay. Customers elsewhere are billed in US dollars (USD) through Paddle.com Market Limited ("Paddle"), which acts as our reseller and the merchant of record for those purchases. Paddle sells the Service to you, collects payment and applicable taxes, issues your invoice and receipt, and handles billing and refund support. Paddle's buyer terms and refund policy apply to those purchases in addition to these Terms, and where they give you greater rights than these Terms, those rights apply.

10.3 We decide which payment channel is offered to you based on your billing location. You must not misstate your location to obtain a different channel or price.

10.4 We may change prices or plan contents. We will give at least 30 days' notice of a price increase, and it will apply from your first billing period that starts after the notice period.

10.5 We may give complimentary access to a plan for a limited time, for example to beta users (an "access grant"). A grant is not a purchase, has no cash value, and ends on its end date. Unless you buy a plan before then, your account moves to the Free plan. We will warn you by email 14 days and 3 days before it ends and show a notice in the Service. Paid features, quotas and some content tied to them may be unavailable or limited on the Free plan, so save what you need before the end date. We may withdraw a grant for breach of these Terms or misuse, and may change the terms of future grants.

11. Subscriptions, renewal and cancellation

11.1 Paid plans are subscriptions billed monthly or annually in advance. They renew automatically for the same period at the then-current price until cancelled. By subscribing you authorise recurring charges to your chosen payment method.

11.2 You can cancel at any time. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period. You keep access until then, and no further charges are made. Refunds are available as set out in the Refund and Cancellation Policy, including a 14-day refund window for every charge.

11.3 Changes to seats or plans take effect as shown at checkout. Reducing seats or downgrading takes effect at the next renewal.

11.4 Cancelling a subscription does not delete your account or data. You can delete your account from Settings (see Section 22).

12. Payments, taxes and non-payment

12.1 You must give accurate payment details and keep them current. You are responsible for all taxes and duties on your purchases other than taxes on Tern's income. Where tax applies, it is added at checkout or on the invoice by the payment provider.

12.2 If a payment fails, we may retry it, notify you, and after reasonable notice restrict or suspend paid features until it is paid. We may recover unpaid amounts and, where the law allows, the reasonable costs of collecting them.

12.3 If you plan to dispute a charge with your bank, please contact us first. We may suspend paid features while a chargeback or dispute is reviewed, and may share relevant information with the payment provider and your bank to respond to it.

12.4 We may run fraud checks and may decline or reverse a transaction that we reasonably suspect is fraudulent or unauthorised.

13. Refunds

13.1 Refunds are governed by our Refund and Cancellation Policy, which forms part of these Terms. Nothing in these Terms limits a refund or withdrawal right that you have under law and cannot be waived.

14. Your content

14.1 "Your content" means everything you submit or create through the Service: profiles, pitches, messages, press releases, articles, briefing documents, files, campaign material and support requests. You keep ownership of it.

14.2 You give Tern a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, process, display, transmit and adapt your content as needed to run, secure, support and improve the Service, to enforce these Terms, and to share it with the people and organisations you choose to share it with. The licence lasts while your content is on the Service and for the time needed to remove it from backups. It also covers the AI improvement use described in Section 9.4.

14.3 You confirm that you own or have the right to use your content, that it does not infringe anyone's rights or break any law, and that you hold every consent and lawful ground needed for any personal data in it, including data about journalists, creators and other people.

14.4 We do not review content in advance and are not responsible for it. We may remove or restrict content or a user's access if we believe it breaches these Terms or the law, or on a valid legal request.

14.5 You are responsible for keeping your own copies. We run backups for our own purposes, but we do not promise to keep your content indefinitely or to recover it.

14.6 We may create and use aggregated or de-identified data from the use of the Service, such as usage statistics, that does not identify you or any individual, to run and improve the Service.

15. Tern's rights

15.1 The Service, including its software, design, database compilation, text, graphics and the names Tern and Tern AI, belongs to Tern or its licensors and is protected by law. While you follow these Terms, we give you a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the Service for your own internal business purposes. We reserve all other rights.

15.2 You must not copy, modify, distribute, sell, lease, sublicense or create derivative works from the Service except as these Terms allow.

15.3 If you give us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without restriction or payment, and you give us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free licence to do so.

16. Publicity

16.1 Unless you tell us otherwise, we may name your organisation and show its logo as a Tern customer on our website and in marketing materials. To opt out, email info@ternai.tech. We will stop using your name and logo in new materials within 30 days.

17. Copyright, reports and takedown

17.1 If you believe content on the Service infringes your copyright or other rights, is defamatory, or breaches these Terms, email info@ternai.tech with your name and contact details, a description of the content and where it appears, why you believe it is unlawful or in breach, and a statement that your report is accurate and made in good faith.

17.2 We will review reports, and may remove or restrict content, tell the person who posted it, and suspend accounts that repeatedly infringe. We act on valid notices as an intermediary under applicable law.

17.3 You can also send a complaint to our Grievance Officer (see Section 28). We will acknowledge it within 24 hours and aim to resolve it within 15 days.

18. Third-party services and links

18.1 The Service relies on, and may link to, services we do not control, including payment providers (Razorpay and Paddle), AI model providers, email, file storage, hosting and calling providers, and the websites and content of journalists, creators and outlets. We are not responsible for them or for their availability, content or practices, and your use of them may be subject to their own terms.

18.2 Journalists, creators, outlets and other users are independent of Tern. We are not responsible for what they say, publish, promise or do.

19. Disclaimers

19.1 THE SERVICE, THE MEDIA DATABASE, AI OUTPUT AND ALL CONTENT ON THE SERVICE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE". TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, TERN DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES AND CONDITIONS, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, NON-INFRINGEMENT AND QUIET ENJOYMENT.

19.2 TERN DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, TIMELY, SECURE OR ERROR-FREE, THAT DEFECTS WILL BE CORRECTED, THAT DATA WILL NOT BE LOST OR ALTERED, OR THAT USING THE SERVICE WILL PRODUCE ANY BUSINESS, MEDIA OR FINANCIAL RESULT.

19.3 Some laws do not allow certain warranties to be excluded. In that case the exclusion applies only to the extent the law permits, and any warranty that cannot be excluded lasts only for the shortest period the law allows.

20. Limitation of liability

20.1 TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, TERN, ITS DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, CONTRACTORS AND SUPPLIERS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR ANY LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, BUSINESS, GOODWILL, REPUTATION, MEDIA COVERAGE, OPPORTUNITIES, DATA OR ANTICIPATED SAVINGS, ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THE AGREEMENT, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE), STATUTE OR OTHERWISE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY.

20.2 TERN'S TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THE SERVICE OR THE AGREEMENT WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE FEES YOU PAID TO TERN FOR THE SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM AND (B) INR 10,000.

20.3 Tern is not liable for the acts or omissions of other users, journalists, creators, outlets, recipients or third-party providers, for the outcome of any pitch, campaign or collaboration, or for loss caused by your content, by AI output you relied on, or by your failure to follow these Terms.

20.4 Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits liability that cannot be excluded or limited under applicable law, including liability for fraud or wilful misconduct, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

20.5 These limits apply to the maximum extent allowed. They are a fair allocation of risk and are reflected in the price of the Service.

21. Indemnity

21.1 You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Tern, its affiliates and their directors, officers, employees and agents from all claims, losses, liabilities, damages, penalties, costs and expenses (including reasonable legal fees) arising out of or related to: (a) your content; (b) pitches, messages or campaigns you send or run, including claims by journalists, creators or recipients; (c) your use of AI output; (d) your breach of the Agreement or any law; (e) your infringement of anyone's rights, or your handling of personal data without a lawful basis; (f) disputes between you and any other user or third party; or (g) anything done through your account.

21.2 We will tell you promptly of any claim. You must not settle a claim in a way that admits fault or imposes obligations on Tern without our written consent, and we may take over the defence of any claim at your expense if we choose.

22. Suspension, termination and deletion

22.1 You can stop using the Service at any time and can delete your account from Settings.

22.2 We may suspend, restrict or end your access, a feature or your account, with notice where practicable, if you breach the Agreement; we reasonably believe you are misusing the Service or putting others, the Service or Tern at risk; you do not pay; the law or a legal authority requires it; or your account has been inactive or unverifiable for a long time. We may also stop providing the Service to a particular person or location.

22.3 When access ends, your right to use the Service ends. We may delete your content after a reasonable period, as set out in the Privacy Policy. If we end a paid subscription for a reason other than your breach of these Terms, we will refund the prepaid fee for the period after the end date. The Refund and Cancellation Policy applies to every charge in all cases.

22.4 Sections that by their nature should survive termination do so, including Sections 5, 7, 8, 14 to 17, 19 to 21 and 26 to 28.

23. Security and incidents

23.1 We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards, but no system is completely secure. We are not liable for unauthorised access that results from your failure to keep credentials safe or from circumstances beyond our reasonable control. We will notify affected users of a personal data breach as the law requires.

24. Events beyond our control

24.1 Neither party is liable for a delay or failure to perform, other than a failure to pay money owed, caused by events beyond its reasonable control. These include natural disasters, war, terrorism, civil unrest, epidemics, government action, labour disputes, power or internet failures, and failures of cloud, hosting, payment or other third-party providers.

25. Sanctions and export compliance

25.1 You confirm that you and your organisation are not on any sanctions or restricted-party list of India, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union or the United Nations, and that you will not use the Service in breach of any sanctions or export control law.

26. Governing law and disputes

26.1 These Terms, and any dispute arising out of or related to the Service, are governed by the laws of India, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

26.2 Before starting formal proceedings, each party will try in good faith to resolve a dispute informally. Write to the other party (to Tern at info@ternai.tech), describe the dispute, and allow 30 days for it to be resolved.

26.3 A dispute that is not resolved within 30 days will be finally settled by arbitration under the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996, before a sole arbitrator appointed by agreement or, failing that, as the Act provides. The seat and venue of arbitration is Chennai, Tamil Nadu. The language is English, and the award is final and binding.

26.4 Subject to Section 26.3, the courts at Chennai, Tamil Nadu have exclusive jurisdiction over any matter that goes to court, including enforcement of an award. Either party may seek urgent interim relief from those courts, or from any court with jurisdiction, to protect intellectual property or confidential information.

26.5 To the fullest extent the law allows, claims may be brought only in your individual capacity, and not as a plaintiff or class member in any class, collective or representative proceeding.

26.6 If you are a consumer in a place whose mandatory law lets you bring claims in your local courts or rely on local consumer protection rules, this Section does not take those rights away.

27. General

27.1 Entire agreement. The Agreement is the whole agreement between you and Tern about the Service and replaces earlier terms, including earlier versions of these Terms.

27.2 Severability. If a provision is found to be unenforceable, it will be enforced to the extent allowed and the rest of the Agreement stays in force.

27.3 No waiver. A delay or failure to enforce a right is not a waiver of it.

27.4 Assignment. You may not assign or transfer your rights or obligations without our written consent. We may assign the Agreement, including in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets.

27.5 Relationship. You and Tern are independent contractors. Nothing in the Agreement creates a partnership, agency, employment or joint venture. There are no third-party beneficiaries, except that Tern's affiliates, directors, officers and employees may rely on Sections 19 to 21.

27.6 Notices. We may give notice by email to your account address, in the Service, or on our website. You may give notice to info@ternai.tech. A notice by email is treated as received when sent.

27.7 Electronic contract. The Agreement is an electronic record under the Information Technology Act, 2000, and needs no physical or digital signature to be binding.

27.8 Language and headings. If a translation differs from the English version, the English version prevails. Headings are for convenience only.

28. Contact and Grievance Officer

Tern Communications Private Limited

Registered office: Plot No. 9, AKMG Nagar, Dindigul 624001, Tamil Nadu, India. Business address: 858-A, KCEE Manoharam, Panneerselvam Salai, Ashok Nagar, Chennai 600078, Tamil Nadu, India.

Email: info@ternai.tech

Grievance Officer: Venkat Raja Kathirvel, Founder, info@ternai.tech. You can send complaints about the Service, content on it, or the handling of personal data to the Grievance Officer. We acknowledge complaints within 24 hours and aim to resolve them within 15 days.