Practitioner agreement

Astitva for Practitioners, a product of Velcro Ventures (OPC) Private Limited
Last updated: 18 October 2026

This agreement is between you, the practitioner, and Velcro Ventures (OPC) Private Limited ("we", "us"), registered at Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, with the GST number (GSTIN) 08AAMCV2856L1ZM. It covers applying to Astitva, giving sessions through it, and being paid for them. The practitioner privacy policy is part of this agreement.

You agree to it when you tick the box before you send your application. We record the time you agreed. If you do not agree, please do not apply.

1. You practise; we run the platform

• You are an independent practitioner. You are not our employee, agent or partner. The session is yours: your judgement, the care you give, your records and your conduct are your responsibility.
• We run the platform. Astitva lists you, takes bookings, collects each session's price from the patient on your behalf, carries the video call, and pays you. We do not supervise sessions, and we do not give medical advice.
• Patients agree to their own terms of use with us, which say that the practitioner provides the session and is responsible for the care they give.

2. Who can practise, and how we check you

• Three kinds of practitioner: clinical psychologists registered with the Rehabilitation Council of India; fertility counsellors; and genetic counsellors.
• What you send: your legal name as it is on your ID, your mobile number, your qualification, your registration number (clinical psychologists), the languages you work in, what you help with and a short bio; your government ID and a photograph of you; your registration certificate (clinical psychologists) or your degree (fertility counsellors; for genetic counsellors, a degree in genetic counselling or a certificate from the Board of Genetic Counselling, India); and your PAN and bank account, so you can be paid.
• What we check: a reviewer reads your documents, checks that the name on your ID is the name you gave and that the photograph is you, and checks your registration number against the official register in your name. For fertility counsellors, we check that the degree is in counselling or psychology. For genetic counsellors, we check that the degree is in genetic counselling, or that the certificate is from the Board of Genetic Counselling, India, in your name.
• What we decide: to verify you, to send your application back with a note saying what to change, or to reject it, with a note. We aim to decide within 3 working days.
• Your registration. You must hold the registration your discipline needs for as long as you practise on Astitva, and tell us within a day if it lapses, is suspended, or has conditions put on it. We may check it again at any time.
• Your profile. Patients see your name, photograph, discipline, qualification, registration, languages, what you help with, your bio, and the price and length of your sessions. You can change what you help with, your bio, your languages and your photograph under You; a new photograph waits for a reviewer. Your name, discipline and registration change only through a new review.

3. Pausing your account

• When. We may pause your account, with a note saying why, if your registration lapses or cannot be confirmed, while we look into a serious complaint about you, if you break this agreement, or when the law requires it.
• What a pause does. Patients can no longer find you or book you, and your open times are hidden. When you open the app, you see the note instead of your sessions. You cannot change your bank details while you are paused.
• What it does not do. Sessions already booked with you are not cancelled, and the money you earn is paid as usual.
• Lifting it. We may lift a pause. Your profile, your price and your hours then come back.

4. The price

• You set the price and length of your sessions. You set them when you apply, and you can change them under You in the app. The price is what the patient pays for one session, in whole rupees. It must be within the limits Astitva sets, which are now ₹500 to ₹10,000. The length is 30, 45, 50 or 60 minutes.
• Patients see your price and length on your profile before they book.
• A change applies to new bookings at once. Nobody reviews it. A session already booked keeps the price and length it was booked at. We see every price, and we may correct one that is outside the limits or breaks this agreement.
• We may change the limits by telling you at least 30 days before. A change of the limits does not change a price you have already set.

5. What you receive: our fee, GST and tax deducted at source

• The patient pays the price of the session to us, through Razorpay, on your behalf.
• From each session's price we keep:
  1. our fee: 20 percent of the price, which is our commission for the booking;
  2. GST at 18 percent on our fee, which we pay to the government;
  3. tax deducted at source (TDS), when it applies (below).
• The rest is yours. For a session of ₹1,000: our fee is ₹200, the GST on it is ₹36, and you receive ₹764. When TDS applies, ₹1 more is deducted, and you receive ₹763. The app shows this breakup as you set your price.
• Each session in Earnings shows its price, our fee, the GST on it, the TDS and what you receive.
• TDS. Under section 194-O of the Income Tax Act 1961, we deduct 0.1 percent of a session's price when the prices of your sessions booked in the financial year (April to March), counted as each is booked, pass ₹5 lakh: from the session that takes the total past ₹5 lakh, and from every session after it that year. We also deduct it from every session while we do not have your PAN. We pay what we deduct to the government, and it counts towards your own tax.
• Your own taxes and registrations are yours: your income tax, and GST if you are registered for it.
• Changes. We may change our fee, or how GST is charged on it, by telling you at least 30 days before. A change applies only to bookings made after it takes effect.

6. When you are paid

• The hold. After a session ends, what you receive for it is held for 24 hours. In that time you or the patient can raise a concern about the session (section 9).
• Ready to be paid. When the hold ends with no concern open, what you receive is ready to be paid. We pay everything that is ready into your bank account by bank transfer once a week, on Monday.
• Penalties come off your payouts. Any penalty you owe under section 8 is taken from your next payout once the 48 hours to appeal it have passed (or an appeal was refused), oldest first. A payout is never taken below zero: what is left of a penalty is taken from the payouts after it. We never ask your bank for it. Each penalty, and what is still to be taken, is in Earnings. A penalty you have appealed is not taken while the appeal waits.
• A concern stops this until we have decided it.
• Your bank details. To be paid, you give us your PAN, your bank account number, the IFSC and the name on the account, in the app. We keep them so that we can pay you; the practitioner privacy policy says how they are kept and who can open them. You must keep them right: we pay into the account you gave us. When we pay you, we check that the name our bank shows for the account is yours, and we may ask you to check your details. Until you have saved them again, what you have earned waits for you, and none of it is lost. You cannot change your bank details while a payout to you is being paid.
• If your bank sends a transfer back, we tell you, and we send it again once your details are right.
• Each payout is in Earnings: the day it was paid, the amount, the sessions it covers and our bank's reference for it.
• Between the patient's payment and your payout, the money is with us, held for you. You are never paid by a patient directly.

7. Your hours and your bookings

• You set the hours you work each week and your days off in the Diary. The app makes the times patients can book from them, sessions of your length one after another, up to 21 days ahead and never less than 12 hours away.
• Changing your hours, or adding a day off, never cancels a session already booked. If you add a day off on a date with a session, the app tells you.
• A patient's booking holds its time for 15 minutes while she pays. A hold she does not pay for ends on its own, and the time opens again.
• Every booking needs your answer. When a patient books and pays, you are told at once in the app, by a phone alert and by email. You accept or decline it in the app.
• You have 12 hours to answer, or until 2 hours before the session if that is sooner. The app shows the time by which you must answer, and we remind you before it runs out.
• When you accept, the session is confirmed.
• If you decline, or do not answer in time, the patient is refunded in full and the time opens again. A penalty applies (section 8).
• Keep phone alerts on, and your email address working. Bookings and reminders reach you through them. We keep a record of every message we send you about a booking, when it was sent and whether it was delivered to your phone or your email provider. If none of the messages asking you to answer a booking could be delivered, a booking you did not answer is declined with no penalty. There is also no penalty if you had less than an hour to answer it.

8. Declining, cancelling and not coming

• The penalties. Each penalty is a percentage of the session's price, plus GST on it at the same rate as on our fee (18 percent today, section 5). For a session of ₹1,200:

• The patient cancels before you answer. She is refunded in full, and there is no penalty for anyone.
• The patient cancels 12 hours or more before the start. She is refunded in full, the time opens again, you are told, and you are not paid for it.
• The patient cancels less than 12 hours before the start. She is not refunded. You are told, you are paid what you receive, as if the session had happened, and the time stays taken.
• The patient does not come. You can mark it as a no-show in the app after the session's end time. She is told, and can raise a concern (section 9). Either way, you are paid as if the session had happened.
• You cancel after accepting. You can cancel a confirmed session at any time before it starts. The patient is refunded in full and told, you are not paid for it, and the penalty for cancelling after accepting applies. If you cannot take a booking, decline it: it costs far less.
• Once a session has started, it cannot be cancelled. A session that did not happen is a no-show or a concern.
• You do not come. If the patient joined the call and you had not joined 15 minutes after the start, the app records that you did not come. The patient is refunded in full, you are not paid for the session, and the penalty for not coming applies.
• Appeals. If you think a penalty is wrong (for example, the app or the call did not work for you), you can appeal from the session in the app within 48 hours of the penalty, saying what happened. We look at the call record and the messages we sent you. We decide every appeal within 48 hours of receiving it, and tell you what we decided and why. If we uphold your appeal, the penalty is removed. The patient's refund stands either way.
• Emergencies. In a real emergency, write to us. We may waive a penalty, and we tell you if we do. We may pause the account of a practitioner who declines, cancels or does not come often.

9. Concerns about a session

• Who and when. You or the patient can raise a concern about a session from its start until 24 hours after it ends, while what you receive for it is still held. One concern can be open for a session at a time.
• Why. Someone did not come; it was not the session that was agreed; the call did not work; or something else. You say what happened in your own words. If the call does not work for you, Could not connect in the app raises a concern for you.
• The answer. The other side can answer the concern once.
• How we decide. The people at Astitva who handle payments read what each of you wrote and look at when each of you joined and left the call. We then decide one of three things:
  1. you are paid in full;
  2. the patient is refunded in full, and you are not paid;
  3. the price is split: you are paid part of what you receive, the patient is refunded the rest, and our fee and the GST on it are reduced in the same proportion.
• We aim to decide within a day. We tell you both what we decided. Our own notes on a concern stay with us.
• Each of you sees what the other wrote, never the other's account.
• If you disagree with what we decided, write to our grievance officer (section 17).

10. Sessions

• Sessions are video calls inside the app, carried by 100ms. Neither Astitva nor 100ms records them.
• You can join from 15 minutes before the start until the end. The app blocks screenshots while a call is on.
• Be on time, and join from a private place where nobody can overhear the patient.
• The patient may turn her camera off, or talk by voice alone. Respect her choice.
• We keep when each of you joined and left the call, with the booking, to settle concerns.

11. What you see of a patient, and confidentiality

• What you see. The name she gives for the session, which may not be her full name, her age on the day she booked, her gender, and what she chooses to tell you. You never see her email address, her phone number, her account, or anything she keeps in the Astitva app.
• Confidentiality. What a patient tells you, and the fact that she saw you, are confidential. Do not share them, record them, or use them for anything but her care and the records your profession requires, unless she agrees or the law requires it. This lasts after a session, and after this agreement ends.
• Your records. Any clinical notes you keep are yours to keep, as the rules of your profession require. Astitva has no place for them and never sees them. You are responsible for them, and for giving a patient her records when the rules of your profession say you must.

12. How you practise on Astitva

• Keep contact inside Astitva. Do not give a patient your phone number, email address or other contact details, ask for hers, or move her care to another app or service, while she books you through Astitva.
• Take no payment outside Astitva for a session booked through it.
• Make no promises of an outcome, such as a pregnancy or a result.
• Prescribe nothing through Astitva. The app has no way to prescribe.
• Treat every patient with respect. No discrimination, harassment, or romantic or sexual contact.
• If a patient may be in danger. Astitva is not an emergency service. Tell her to call 112 in an emergency, or Tele-MANAS on 14416 or 1-800-891-4416, and tell us at once by raising a concern or writing to us.
• Be yourself. Give true information, keep your account to yourself, and never let anyone else give a session in your name.

13. Closing your account

• You can delete your account in the app at any time, whatever stage you are at: under You once you are verified, and until then, or while your account is paused, at the bottom of the screen the app opens on.
• The app asks you to wait while: sessions booked with you have not happened yet, including a session a patient cancelled late, because you will be paid for it; a concern about one of your sessions is still open; or some of what you have earned has not been paid out.
• When your account is deleted, patients can no longer find you or book you. What is deleted and what the law makes us keep, and for how long, is in the practitioner privacy policy.
• Deleting your account deletes your bank details. If a payout we sent comes back from your bank after you delete your account, we write to you at your email address to pay you another way.

14. Ending this agreement

• You can stop taking bookings at any time by clearing your hours in the Diary, and end this agreement by closing your account (section 13).
• We can end this agreement by telling you at least 7 days before, or at once if you seriously break it, if your registration lapses, or when the law requires it.
• Sessions already booked when it ends are given as booked, or cancelled with a full refund to the patient.
• What you have earned is paid on the usual schedule. Sections 5, 6, 9, 11 and 15 to 17 continue after this agreement ends.

15. Responsibility and liability

• You are responsible for the care you give, for your professional conduct and for your records.
• We are responsible for running the platform with care, checking practitioners before we list them, and handling payments and concerns as this agreement says.
• We are not responsible for loss we could not reasonably have foreseen, or for problems caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as a failure of Razorpay, 100ms or the internet.
• If we are responsible for a loss, our total liability to you is limited to the fee we earned from your sessions in the 12 months before the claim.
• Nothing in this agreement limits a liability that the law does not allow to be limited.

16. Changes to this agreement

We may change this agreement. When we do, we change the date at the top and tell you at least 30 days before the change takes effect, unless the law requires a change sooner. If you do not agree, you can stop taking bookings and close your account before it takes effect.

17. Law, disputes and contact

• This agreement is governed by the laws of India, and the courts at Jaipur, Rajasthan have jurisdiction.
• Before going to court, please write to our grievance officer. Most problems can be put right that way.
• Grievance officer: The Grievance Officer, support@astitvaapp.com, with "Grievance" in the subject.
• Email: support@astitvaapp.com
• Velcro Ventures (OPC) Private Limited, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India