Who we are
Vora is a Qatar-based startup building software and hardware that makes air conditioners you already own run on less electricity. We are incubated at Qatar Science & Technology Park in Doha and operate under a QSTP Free Zone Licence, commercial registration number 240351.
This policy covers vora.qa and nothing else. The Vora mobile app and dashboard are not generally available yet; when they are, they will come with their own policy.
We decide what happens to the personal data described here, which makes us its controller. Write to us about any of it at dev@vora.qa.
What we collect, and why
We only ask for what we need in order to answer you. Nothing on this site requires an account.
- Waitlist sign-up: your email address, so we can tell you when Vora is available and send occasional news about how it is coming along.
- Optional waitlist details: your name, phone number, country dialling code, and whether you are asking for a home or a business. You choose whether to give these; they help us understand who is waiting and reach you the way you prefer.
- Pilot requests: your organisation, name, work email, phone number, how many AC units and sites you run, and any message you write. We use these to reply and to work out whether a pilot makes sense.
- Abuse prevention: a one-way hash of your IP address, saved alongside each submission. It cannot be turned back into your IP address. It does one job, which is to stop a single source flooding our forms.
- Analytics: which pages are read, what gets clicked, roughly which country you are in, and which browser and device you use. This is collected only after you accept analytics cookies.
We do not want, and never ask for, payment card details, government identity numbers, or health information through this website. Please do not send them to us.
We do not sell personal data and we do not share it with advertisers.
Why we are allowed to use it
Qatar's Personal Data Privacy Protection Law (Law No. 13 of 2016) and, where it applies to you, the EU and UK General Data Protection Regulation both require a lawful reason for using personal data. Ours are:
- Your consent, for marketing emails about Vora and for analytics cookies. You give it by joining the waitlist or by pressing Accept on the cookie banner, and you can take it back whenever you like.
- Our legitimate interests, for replying to a pilot request, keeping our forms free of abuse, and keeping the site secure. We use the least data that achieves those things.
- A legal obligation, where we have to keep a record or respond to a lawful request from a Qatari authority.
Cookies and analytics
vora.qa carries no advertising cookies and no cross-site trackers. Nothing that measures you loads before you choose.
Two tools load only after you press Accept. Google Analytics 4 tells us how many people visit and which pages they read. Microsoft Clarity records how the page was used - clicks, scrolling, where people give up - so we can find what is broken. Both set cookies in your browser and both are operated by their own companies under their own privacy policies.
Two Vercel tools run at all times: Vercel Analytics and Speed Insights. They count page views and measure loading speed. They set no cookies and do not follow you to other sites.
Your answer to the banner is stored in your own browser under the name vora-consent, and is never sent to us. To change your mind, clear this site's data in your browser settings and the banner will ask again on your next visit. If you press Decline, neither Google Analytics nor Microsoft Clarity is loaded at all.
Who else handles your data
We keep the list of companies involved short, and each one receives only what it needs to do its job for us.
- Vercel, which hosts this website and provides the cookieless analytics described above.
- Neon, the managed database that stores waitlist entries and pilot requests.
- Resend, which sends the emails you receive from us.
- Google (Google Analytics 4) and Microsoft (Clarity), for website analytics, and only after you have accepted.
These providers act on our instructions and are not free to use your data for their own unrelated purposes.
Their servers, and therefore your data, may sit outside Qatar, including in the European Union and the United States. Where a transfer falls under the GDPR, it relies on the standard contractual clauses in those providers' data processing terms.
How long we keep it
- Waitlist entries: until you ask us to delete them, or until the launch communications you signed up for have finished.
- Pilot requests: 24 months after we last heard from you, so that a conversation can be picked up where it stopped.
- Abuse-prevention hashes: they live on the same record as the submission and are deleted with it.
- Analytics: held by Google and Microsoft under their own retention schedules. We keep no copy of it ourselves.
When you ask us to delete your data we do it and we confirm it. We may keep a minimal note that a deletion request was made and honoured, because we may have to show that we did.
Your rights
Under Qatar's Personal Data Privacy Protection Law, and under the GDPR if you are in the EU or the UK, you can ask us to:
- tell you what personal data we hold about you, and give you a copy;
- correct anything that is wrong or out of date;
- delete your data;
- stop using it, or limit how we use it;
- hand it over in a portable, machine-readable form;
- act on a withdrawal of your consent, which stops future use but does not undo what was already done lawfully.
Email dev@vora.qa and we will answer within 30 days. We may ask you to confirm which email address the request concerns, so that we never hand your data to someone else.
To stop receiving email from us, reply to any message we send and say so, or write to dev@vora.qa. We will remove you.
If you think we have handled your data badly, tell us first and give us a chance to put it right. You can also complain to the competent data protection authority in Qatar under the Law or, if you are in the EU or the UK, to your local supervisory authority.
Keeping it safe
The site is served over HTTPS. Waitlist entries and pilot requests sit in a managed Postgres database, and access to it is limited to the founders. We store a hash of your IP address rather than the address itself.
No system is perfect. If we ever find a breach that affects your personal data, we will tell you and the competent authority as the Law requires.
Children
vora.qa is written for adults making decisions about their home or their business. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has given us their details, email dev@vora.qa and we will delete them.
Changes to this policy
When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change materially affects how we use data you have already given us, we will email you before it takes effect.
Contact us
Questions, requests and complaints all go to dev@vora.qa. We are based at Qatar Science & Technology Park in Doha, Qatar.