ZKTOR, an Indian social media and digital services platform, is positioning itself around a privacy-focused model that separates audience discovery, private communication and commercial transactions rather than combining them into a single customer profile.
According to founder Sunil Kumar Singh, the platform crossed one million users during its first 10 months of mass public beta across India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The company outlined its technology and privacy architecture at a technical evidence briefing at the Press Club of India.
Hyperlocal discovery without behavioural tracking
The platform’s commercial ecosystem is built around what it describes as Hyperlocal-first Local Digital Worlds, connecting districts, languages and communities, including diaspora audiences, without relying on movement tracking.
ZKTOR says its natural feeds are based on users’ choices rather than behavioural profiling. Its no-pushed-algorithm approach is accompanied by what the company describes as zero behavioural tracking.
Its ZHAN advertising system is designed to match advertisements according to subject, language and locality. The company says agencies can use the platform for campaign management, translation and merchant support, while creators receive 70% of applicable content-attributable income.
The platform combines social posts, status updates, short videos, long-form video channels, pages, clubs, buddy connections, news, messaging and individual or group voice and video calls.
Separate architecture for private communication
ZKTOR says private enquiries are kept outside advertising and feed-ranking systems. Its SNDESH messaging service uses multiple security layers, including device-to-device end-to-end encryption, message-level keys and rotating server-side protection.
Other connected services include HOLA AI for task-specific multilingual assistance, EZOWM for commerce and ZWATO for business administration.
The company has also introduced KHOZO.com, which it describes as an evidence-first search and AI-assisted discovery service. According to ZKTOR, the service provides inspectable sources, updated answers and visible corrections without profiling searchers or exposing protected media and messages.
Privacy and data safety by design
The company’s architecture is based on what it calls Privacy and Data Safety by Design. ZKTOR says default collection and access limits, multi-layer encryption, rotating keys and Zero Knowledge Server Architecture restrict operator access to private content.
The company also says one-time passwords are used for authentication while operational records remain separate.
Its No URL Media Architecture is designed to distribute protected photographs and videos through audience permissions rather than reusable public file links. ZKTOR says this approach is intended to limit link-based scraping and extraction associated with impersonation and deepfake abuse.
The company acknowledges that screenshots, recipient recordings and external-camera capture remain possible.
Women’s safety and grievance redressal
ZKTOR says its platform supports public, friends-only and private audiences, alongside controls for comments and content resharing. It also highlights women-first safeguards and protections concerning children depicted by adults.
For complaints arising from relationships or platform interactions, the company says country-based grievance officers and a Women and Children Wing provide specialist local-language human review. The process includes reasons, notification, escalation and appeals, according to the company.
ZKTOR also says its protective AI systems can flag sexual content, impersonation and child-safety risks without supplying advertising data.
Country-based data sovereignty
The company says country-based data sovereignty is used to keep servers, encryption boundaries, keys and access controls separate, including through in-country backups and disaster recovery.
Singh said the company’s approach references India’s Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) framework and the European Union’s GDPR for cross-border arrangements.
According to ZKTOR, shared engineering infrastructure connects its services without pooling national datasets. Separate permissions are intended to keep private conversations, searches and purchases outside advertising profiles.
India-focused research and global expansion
Singh said his work combines 12 years of India-focused research with rural needs and European privacy culture. The founder, a Finnish citizen who has spent more than two decades in Finland, said the company is pursuing a model supported by a combination of government grants, external venture capital and business-house backing.
The company links its Indian development operations with Finnish headquarters and a Chicago research gateway, while describing its engineering approach as inspired by India’s ISRO programme.
Its South Asia expansion strategy involves country-by-country testing. Bhutan and the Maldives are currently described as being in mass public beta.
Singh said the broader objective is to build what he calls a profiling-free internet, where users can participate, create and earn without behavioural tracking.
“The transaction moves forward; access to the conversation that began it does not automatically travel with it,” Singh said, summarising the company’s approach to separating user activities and permissions.”
