Marketplace Terms

These Marketplace Terms apply when you buy or sell digital services on Saathum. They are part of our Terms of Service and work alongside our Acceptable Use Policy and Community Guidelines. Your agreement is with the Saathum founding team through Ava Global International, Inc., a Delaware corporation. See who we are.

1. Saathum is a venue, not a party to your deal

When a buyer purchases a digital service from a seller, the contract for that service is between the buyer and the seller. Saathum provides the marketplace, the tools, and the payment rails. We are not the seller, not the buyer, not an agent for either, and not a party to the transaction.

We do not guarantee the quality, legality, safety, or accuracy of any listing, and we do not guarantee that a buyer will pay or that a seller will deliver. We may verify certain information about sellers, but unless a listing expressly says otherwise, assume we have not verified a seller's skills, credentials, or claims.

2. Seller eligibility and responsibilities

To sell on Saathum you must:

• Be of legal age to enter a contract where you live, and have an account in good standing.
• Complete any identity, tax, or payout verification we require before you can be paid.
• Hold every licence, registration, or permission your service needs in your jurisdiction and in the buyer's, and keep them current.
• Be responsible for your own taxes. You are responsible for determining, collecting where applicable, reporting, and paying any taxes on your earnings. We may collect tax information from you and may withhold or report amounts where the law requires it.
• Comply with all laws that apply to what you are selling, including consumer protection, advertising, export, and data protection law.

You are solely responsible for what you list, what you promise, and what you deliver.

3. Accurate listings

• Describe what the buyer actually gets: the scope, the format, what is included and what is not.
• State the price, delivery time, and any revision policy clearly before purchase.
• Do not use misleading titles, fake reviews, borrowed portfolios, or samples you did not create.
• Do not claim a qualification, certification, award, or affiliation you do not hold.
• Disclose where AI tools do a substantial part of the work, if a reasonable buyer would want to know.
• Keep listings up to date and pause them if you cannot deliver.

4. Delivering the service

• Deliver through Saathum, within the time you stated, and to the scope you described.
• Communicate on the platform. Taking a deal off-platform to avoid fees removes the buyer's protections and may lead to enforcement.
• If you cannot deliver, say so promptly so the order can be cancelled or refunded — see Refunds & Cancellations.
• Do not ask a buyer to pay outside Saathum, and do not request payment by methods we do not support.

5. Buyer responsibilities

• Read the listing before you buy and ask questions if the scope is not clear.
• Give the seller what they need — briefs, files, access, feedback — on time.
• Do not use a seller's work outside the licence you were granted, and do not resell it as your own where that was not part of the deal.
• Do not use the marketplace to obtain anything prohibited by our Acceptable Use Policy.
• Do not abuse cancellations, refunds, or chargebacks. Filing a chargeback instead of using our dispute process may result in account action.

6. Prohibited listings

You may not list, and may not buy:

• Anything illegal, or anything requiring a licence you do not hold.
• Adult or sexual services of any kind. Anything involving a minor is absolutely prohibited — see Child Safety Standards.
• Academic work presented as the buyer's own where that breaches an institution's rules, and other services designed to deceive third parties.
• Fake engagement, followers, reviews, ratings, or traffic, on Saathum or anywhere else.
• Hacking, account access, data scraping, malware, or anything designed to compromise systems, accounts, or privacy.
• Content or software you do not have the right to sell, including pirated material and leaked databases — see DMCA / Copyright.
• Regulated advice — medical, legal, financial — offered without the licences and disclosures the law requires. See the Live Consultation Terms.
• Money transfer, currency exchange, lending, investment schemes, or anything that functions as a financial service.
• Personal data about other people, and identity or verification documents.

7. Fees and commission

Saathum charges a commission on marketplace sales, and payment processors may charge their own fees. The rates that apply to you, and how they are shown at checkout, are set out on our Pricing & Fees page. We may change fees; we will publish changes before they take effect, and changes do not apply retroactively to orders already placed.

8. Payments and payouts

Buyer payments are collected through our payment providers. Seller earnings are held and released according to our Payouts policy, which sets out clearing periods, minimum thresholds, supported methods, and the information you must provide to be paid. We may hold, delay, or reverse a payout where we suspect fraud, a chargeback, a policy violation, or where the law requires it.

9. Cancellations, refunds, and disputes

Cancellation and refund rules are on our Refunds & Cancellations page.

A dispute about a digital service is fundamentally between the buyer and the seller, and you should try to resolve it directly first. If you cannot, you can raise it with us. We may, at our discretion, review the order, look at what was delivered, and decide how funds held on the platform are released — including refunding the buyer in whole or in part, or releasing payment to the seller. Our role is limited. We are not an arbitrator, our decision is about the funds we hold and nothing more, and it does not stop either party pursuing whatever legal rights they have against the other.

10. Our right to remove listings and accounts

We may remove, hide, edit the visibility of, or refuse any listing, and we may limit or terminate a seller or buyer account, at our discretion — for example where a listing breaks these terms or the law, where we receive credible reports, where a rights holder complains, or where we need to protect users or the platform. Where it is practical and lawful, we will tell you why and you can appeal to [email protected].

11. Intellectual property and licences

• Your listing content stays yours. By listing, you grant Saathum a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, display, reproduce, and promote your listing content — titles, descriptions, images, samples, video — for the purpose of operating and marketing the marketplace. This licence ends when you remove the listing, except for copies in backups, records we must keep, and material already used in published promotion.
• What the buyer gets is what the listing says. If the listing does not specify, the buyer receives a licence to use the delivered work for the purpose described in the order, and the seller keeps ownership.
• You warrant that you own or are licensed to use everything you upload, and that it does not infringe anyone's rights.

12. No employment relationship

Sellers are independent. Nothing here creates an employment, agency, partnership, joint venture, or franchise relationship between a seller and Saathum, or between a seller and a buyer. Sellers control how, when, and where they work, set their own prices within the marketplace, and are responsible for their own equipment, insurance, benefits, and taxes. Saathum does not supervise or direct a seller's work.

13. Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Saathum is not liable for the acts or omissions of any buyer or seller, for the quality or legality of any service, or for losses arising from a transaction between users. The limitations and exclusions in our Terms of Service apply to these Marketplace Terms.

14. Changes

We may update these terms. We will post the updated version here and revise the date above. Continuing to buy or sell after a change means you accept it.

Questions? Email [email protected]. You can also use our Grievance Redressal process.