Terms & Conditions

01About Ekathana

Ekathana is an online marketplace based in Sri Lanka that connects people planning events with the professionals and content creators who serve them. These Terms & Conditions ("Terms") govern your access to and use of the ekathana.lk website and every feature offered through it.

By creating an account, publishing a profile, sending a message or otherwise using Ekathana, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree with them, please do not use the platform.

In these Terms, "we", "us" and "Ekathana" refer to the operator of the platform. "You" refers to any person using it, whether or not you hold an account.

02How the marketplace works

Ekathana is a venue for introductions, not a party to your booking. We list two kinds of professional accounts — Providers and Creators — and give visitors the tools to find, evaluate and contact them.

Any engagement, quotation, contract, delivery, payment or dispute that follows an introduction is strictly between the two people involved. Ekathana does not supply event services, does not create content, does not act as an agent or employer of any Provider or Creator, and is not a party to the agreements they enter into.

We do not guarantee that any Provider or Creator will be available, will respond, will perform to a particular standard, or that any listing will produce enquiries or bookings.

03Accounts and eligibility

You must be at least 18 years old to create an Ekathana account. By registering, you confirm that you are 18 or over and that the information you provide is accurate and kept up to date.

You may register with an email address and password, or by signing in with Google. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for everything done through your account. Tell us at hello@ekathana.lk immediately if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

Ekathana recognises three roles, and the same person may hold more than one:

• User accounts — anyone browsing, messaging, saving or reviewing. Free.
• Provider accounts — event businesses and professionals publishing a service profile.
• Creator accounts — content creators and influencers publishing a creator profile.

One person or business may hold multiple profiles under a single account. Creating accounts to impersonate someone else, to evade a suspension, or to manipulate reviews or rankings is prohibited.

04Public profiles and review before publication

Provider and Creator profiles are public documents. Everything you put on one — your name or business name, description, bio, categories, location and service areas, languages, contact number, website, social links, packages or rates, brands you have worked with, FAQs and images — is visible to anyone who visits the page, including people who are not signed in.

Certain details are shown only to signed-in members. Package and rate details are one example: visitors who are not logged in see that pricing exists but not what it says.

New profiles and material edits are reviewed by our team before they are published. We may approve a profile, ask for changes, or decline to publish it. A profile may also be paused where a required subscription has lapsed. Review is a quality and safety check; it is not an endorsement, a verification of your claims, or a warranty to anyone who reads your page.

You are responsible for the accuracy of your profile, including any pricing, availability, qualifications, awards or past clients you state on it.

05Content you upload

You keep ownership of everything you upload — photographs, logos, cover images, story media, captions and written copy. Nothing in these Terms transfers your copyright to us.

By uploading content you grant Ekathana a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, resize, cache and display that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the platform. That includes showing your profile imagery in search results, category pages, the featured section and shareable link previews. This licence lasts while the content is on the platform and for a short period afterwards while backups and caches clear.

You confirm that you own the content you upload, or have permission to use it, and that publishing it on Ekathana does not infringe anyone else's rights. Do not upload photographs of other people's work as your own, stock imagery you are not licensed to use, or images of identifiable people who have not agreed to appear.

Uploaded images are stored with our cloud storage provider. Deleting an image from your profile removes it from the platform and schedules the underlying file for deletion.

06Messaging

Signed-in members can message Providers and Creators directly. Messages are private between the participants and are not published on profiles or in search.

Messages are stored so that conversations persist across devices. Our team does not read private conversations as a matter of course, but we may access specific messages where it is necessary to investigate a report, respond to a safety concern, prevent fraud or comply with the law.

Some channels are one-way announcements from Ekathana and cannot be replied to.

Do not use messaging to send unsolicited bulk marketing, abuse or harassment, fraudulent payment requests, or attempts to move a member off-platform in order to evade these Terms.

07Stories

Stories are short-lived posts available to profiles with an active boost. A profile may run one live story at a time.

A story is visible for 24 hours from the moment it is posted, after which it stops being shown and its media file is permanently deleted from our storage. Expiry is automatic and cannot be paused or extended.

Anyone who can see a story may view it, like it, share a link to it, or reply to it. Replies are delivered as ordinary private messages and remain in the conversation after the story itself has expired — at which point the preview simply shows that the story is no longer available.

Deleting a story removes it immediately for everyone. Views, likes and share counts are shown to the profile that posted it.

08Reviews and ratings

Reviews may only be written by signed-in members. Each member may leave one review per profile, which they can update later, and no one may review a profile they own.

Reviews must describe a genuine experience. Buying, selling, exchanging or incentivising reviews, writing reviews for competitors, and posting reviews on behalf of someone else are all prohibited.

A profile owner may hide a review from their public page, and either the owner or the review's author may delete it. Hiding or deleting a review removes it from the profile's public rating. We may remove reviews that break these Terms.

Star ratings shown on a profile are the average of its visible reviews. They are member opinions, not an assessment by Ekathana.

09Boost and featured listings

Boost is an optional paid promotion applied to a single profile for a fixed period. While a boost is active, that profile is eligible to appear in featured placements, is prioritised in listings, and gains access to Stories.

Providers must hold an active subscription before a boost can be purchased. Creators may boost without a subscription.

Boost improves visibility only. It does not guarantee a position, a number of impressions, enquiries or bookings, and it does not affect review ratings or the outcome of profile review.

A boost runs for the period purchased and then ends automatically. Featured placements are selected from currently boosted profiles and may rotate.

10Subscriptions, payments and refunds

Providers require an active subscription to keep a profile published once any introductory period has ended. Creator profiles do not require a subscription. Prices for subscriptions, boosts and Digital Business Cards are shown before purchase.

Payments are made by direct bank transfer. After transferring, you submit your payment slip to us over WhatsApp and our team confirms it manually, at which point the purchase is activated. Ekathana does not collect or store card or banking credentials at any point, and there is no automatic recurring charge — each period is paid for deliberately.

Because access is granted immediately on confirmation, purchases are generally non-refundable once the subscription, boost or card has been activated. If a payment is taken in error, or a paid feature is unavailable through our fault, contact us at hello@ekathana.lk and we will put it right.

If a subscription lapses, affected profiles are paused rather than deleted — your content is retained and becomes visible again when the subscription is restored.

11Digital Business Cards

A Digital Business Card is an optional shareable page presenting your name, role, photograph, contact details, social links and a QR code, available at its own public link and exportable as an image or PDF.

Card content is subject to the same review as profiles, and to a separate content approval after payment is confirmed. Ekathana branding on the card is a required part of the product and may not be removed or obscured.

You are responsible for the accuracy of the contact details on your card and for how widely you distribute it. A published card is a public page: treat anything on it as public information.

12Acceptable use

Ekathana is a professional marketplace, and the standard of behaviour expected on it is the standard you would expect at a client meeting. You agree not to use the platform to:

• post false, misleading or fraudulent information, including fake credentials, fabricated past work or invented pricing;
• impersonate another person, business or brand, or misrepresent your association with one;
• upload content that is unlawful, obscene, hateful, harassing, defamatory or that sexualises minors;
• infringe anyone's copyright, trade mark or other intellectual property;
• publish another person's private information without their consent;
• send spam, chain messages or unsolicited bulk marketing through the messaging system;
• manipulate reviews, ratings, view counts or search placement by any means;
• attempt to gain unauthorised access to accounts, servers or data, or to probe, scan or test the security of the platform;
• scrape, harvest or bulk-copy profiles, contact details or content, whether manually or by automated means;
• interfere with the operation of the platform, including by overloading it or introducing malicious code; or
• use the platform for any purpose that is unlawful in Sri Lanka.

We investigate reported breaches and act on what we find — see Suspension and termination below.

13Your responsibilities

All members are responsible for the accuracy of what they publish, for their conduct towards others on the platform, and for satisfying themselves about anyone they deal with before entering into an arrangement, paying money or sharing personal information.

Providers are additionally responsible for holding any licences, registrations, insurance or permissions their services require; for honouring the scope, dates and pricing they agree with a client; for the conduct of their own staff and subcontractors; and for keeping availability and pricing current.

Creators are additionally responsible for disclosing paid partnerships and sponsored content as the law and the relevant platform require; for holding the rights to the work shown in their portfolio; for the accuracy of any audience or engagement claims they make; and for delivering what they agree with a brand.

Where you handle another member's personal information — a client's contact details, for instance — you are responsible for handling it lawfully.

14Intellectual property

The Ekathana name, logo, wordmark, interface design, layouts, illustrations, written copy and software are owned by Ekathana and protected by intellectual property law. Nothing in these Terms gives you a right to use them beyond what is necessary to use the platform normally.

You may not copy, adapt, reverse engineer, resell or create derivative works from the platform or any part of it, or use our branding in a way that suggests endorsement or affiliation without our written permission.

Content published by members remains theirs. Downloading, republishing or re-using another member's photographs, copy or portfolio without their permission is not permitted.

15Copyright complaints

If you believe content on Ekathana infringes your copyright, email hello@ekathana.lk with enough detail for us to act: a description of the work, the exact page or image concerned, your contact details, and a statement that you are the rights holder or authorised to act for them.

We investigate every properly made complaint and remove infringing material where the claim is substantiated. Accounts that repeatedly infringe the rights of others may be suspended or terminated.

16Third-party links and services

Profiles, business cards and messages frequently contain links to third-party services — Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp and personal websites among them. Those services are operated by other companies under their own terms and privacy policies.

Ekathana does not control, endorse or take responsibility for third-party sites, their content, or what happens when you follow a link to them. Handle links and any information you share through them with the same care you would anywhere else on the internet.

We rely on third-party infrastructure to run the platform, including cloud hosting, file storage and email delivery. Their involvement is described in our Privacy Policy.

17Profile ownership

A profile belongs to the account that created it. Only that account, and Ekathana staff acting under these Terms, may edit or remove it.

Profiles are not transferable between accounts without our involvement. If a business changes hands, or a profile was created by someone who has left, contact us at hello@ekathana.lk and we will help resolve it. We may ask for proof of ownership of the business or brand.

Where two people claim the same profile, we may pause it while we establish who is entitled to it.

Changes to a published display name may require our approval, so that a profile carrying reviews and history cannot quietly become a different business.

18Removing illegal or harmful content

We remove content that is unlawful under Sri Lankan law, that infringes someone's rights, or that presents a risk to members. Where we can, we tell the account concerned what was removed and why.

In urgent cases — content that is illegal, that puts someone at risk, or that is being used to defraud members — we may remove it, hide a profile or suspend an account immediately and without prior notice.

To report content, email hello@ekathana.lk or use the report control on the profile concerned. Reports made in bad faith to damage a competitor are themselves a breach of these Terms.

19Suspension and termination

We may suspend or restrict an account or profile where we reasonably believe these Terms have been breached, where a profile is being investigated, where payment is overdue, or where suspension is necessary to protect members or the platform.

We may terminate an account for serious or repeated breaches, for unlawful activity, or for conduct that puts other members at risk. Where the situation allows, we will give notice and an opportunity to put things right first.

You may stop using Ekathana at any time and may ask us to close your account — see Account deletion in the Privacy Policy.

Suspension or termination does not entitle you to a refund of any subscription, boost or business card already activated, and does not affect obligations you have already taken on with another member.

20Disclaimer

Ekathana is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by Sri Lankan law, we exclude all warranties that are not expressly set out in these Terms, whether express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement.

In particular, we do not warrant that the platform will be uninterrupted, error-free or secure against every threat; that listings, reviews, pricing or availability are accurate or current; that any Provider or Creator is qualified, licensed, insured or suitable for your event; or that using the platform will produce any particular commercial result.

Profile review, verification badges and boosted placement are platform features. None of them is a recommendation, a guarantee of quality, or a substitute for your own checks before hiring someone or paying them money.

21Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Ekathana is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, data or anticipated savings, however it arises.

We are not liable for the acts or omissions of members, including any failure to perform a booking, any dispute about work or payment between a member and a Provider or Creator, or any loss arising from content another member has published.

Where we are found liable despite the above, our total liability to you for all claims arising in any twelve-month period is limited to the greater of the amount you paid Ekathana in that period, or LKR 10,000.

Nothing in these Terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, including liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

22Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms as the platform develops or as the law requires. The date at the top of this page always shows when it was last changed.

Where a change materially affects your rights we will give reasonable notice, by email or through the platform, before it takes effect. Continuing to use Ekathana after a change takes effect means you accept the updated Terms.

23Governing law and jurisdiction

These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with them or their subject matter, are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka.

The courts of Sri Lanka have exclusive jurisdiction over any such dispute or claim.

If any provision of these Terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continue in full effect and the unenforceable provision is applied to the fullest extent the law allows.

24Contact us

Questions about these Terms, reports of content that breaches them, and copyright complaints should go to hello@ekathana.lk.

You can also reach us through the contact page. We are based in Colombo, Sri Lanka.