Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") constitute a legally binding agreement between you ("Student", "Learner", or "User") and Sphere Hive Academy("Atelier", "we", "us", or "our"), an engineering education initiative operated under Sphere Hive Lab, headquartered at KVGCE Campus, Kurunjibhag, Sullia, Karnataka - 574327, India.

By visiting our website at atelier.spherehive.com, creating a student account, or purchasing enrollment in any live cohort, workshop, or assessment, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms, alongside our Privacy Policy and Pricing & Refund Policy. If you do not agree to these terms in full, you must discontinue platform use immediately.

Age Requirements: You must be at least 18 years of age to register for an Atelier cohort. Learners between 16 and 18 years may enroll only with explicit verifiable consent from a parent or legal guardian.

Account Authenticity: You agree to provide true, accurate, and current information during registration—including your legal name, university/college affiliation, verified contact number, and academic email. Impersonating another person or creating fake profiles is grounds for permanent disqualification.

Single-User License & Credential Protection: Every enrolled seat represents a single, non-transferable license. You are responsible for safeguarding your login credentials (passwords, Google OAuth tokens, and GitHub SSH keys). Atelier monitors concurrent logins and unusual IP geographically disjointed sessions. If credential sharing is detected, we reserve the right to suspend the account pending an integrity review.

Live Instruction & Schedule: Atelier cohorts are delivered via live, real-time interactive lectures, hands-on coding studios, and architecture design sessions. Cohort schedules are published in your student workbench. Sphere Hive Academy reserves the right to reschedule lectures with prior notice in the event of instructor illness, national holidays, or emergency technical disruptions.

Recorded Sessions: High-definition recordings of live sessions are typically uploaded to your student portal within 12 hours of broadcast. Enrolled learners maintain access to their batch recordings throughout their enrollment period and for an additional archival period specified during course enrollment.

1-on-1 Mentor Callbacks:Enrolled students in premium tracks are entitled to request 1-on-1 technical consultations with industry mentors. To respect our mentors' time, cancellations must be requested at least 4 hours in advance. Repeated no-shows without notification may temporarily pause callback privileges.

Batch Transfers: If university examinations, medical reasons, or verifiable personal emergencies prevent you from actively following your enrolled cohort, you may apply for a one-time free batch transfer to the next immediate cohort of the same track.

Atelier is built on an ethos of craftsmanship, curiosity, and rigorous engineering ethics. Every student agrees to adhere strictly to our Academic Honor Code:

• Authentic Authorship: All project code, repository commits, and capstone submissions must represent your own intellectual effort or attributed collaboration in team assignments.
• Responsible AI Usage: We actively teach modern engineers how to leverage LLMs and AI coding assistants. Using AI to explain algorithms, suggest regex patterns, or debug errors is encouraged. However, blindly copy-pasting entire generated modules without understanding their mechanics, or submitting unverified AI outputs for graded assessments, violates the honor code.
• No Plagiarism or Asset Piracy: Submitting projects downloaded from GitHub, cloning peer repositories without architectural divergence, or redistributing closed-source cohort problem sets is strictly banned.
• Respectful Community Conduct: Our live chats, Discord channels, and discussion threads must remain professional, supportive, and inclusive. Harassment, discrimination, hate speech, bullying, solicitation, or vulgarity results in instantaneous expulsion without appeal or refund.

Assessment Evaluation: Graded checkpoints include algorithmic challenges, system architecture diagnostics, SQL query benchmarks, and manual mentor reviews of GitHub pull requests.

Proctoring Telemetry: Certain critical diagnostic assessments feature lightweight client-side proctoring. When taking a proctored assessment, the platform monitors window focus events, full-screen departures, and tab-switch counts. Repeated tab switches are logged and may flag an attempt for human mentor review or disqualify an automated passing grade.

Certification Criteria: Official Atelier Completion Certificates are cryptographically verifiable credentials issued only upon satisfying minimum attendance thresholds, passing required milestone assessments, and defending your capstone project before faculty or mentor panels.

Showcase License: By submitting capstone projects to Atelier showcases or Demo Day, you grant Sphere Hive Academy a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to feature your project name, demo screenshots, architecture diagrams, and public GitHub link in our alumni portfolio, marketing reels, and hiring partner catalogs.

Pricing & Currency: All cohort tuition fees are quoted in Indian Rupees (INR) unless otherwise explicitly stated. Prices are subject to revision for upcoming batches; however, enrolled students will never face fee increases for batches already purchased.

Payment Aggregator: All online transactions are processed through authorized, RBI-compliant payment partners (Razorpay). Atelier does not store credit/debit card numbers, CVV codes, or net banking passwords on its servers.

Taxes & Invoicing: Where applicable under Indian taxation laws, Goods and Services Tax (GST) is calculated and levied. Tax invoices are generated electronically and delivered to your registered email address.

Refunds & Cancellations: Detailed refund procedures, timelines, and non-refundable circumstances are governed explicitly by our Pricing & Refund Policy, which offers a 7-day refund window from cohort commencement.

Atelier is committed to radical honesty in tech education. We reject fraudulent marketing gimmicks such as "guaranteed jobs without effort" or inflated placement statistics.

Our career support services include:

• 1-on-1 resume and GitHub portfolio audits with senior engineers.
• Live mock technical coding and system architecture interviews.
• Referral introductions to our hiring network of tech startups and engineering enterprises.
• Salary negotiation strategies and offer evaluation mentorship.

While over 90% of active, dedicated Atelier alumni successfully transition into software engineering roles, Sphere Hive Academy does not guarantee employment, minimum CTC packages, or specific visa sponsorships. Employment offers are made solely at the discretion of hiring companies based on your individual performance during their evaluation processes.

Sphere Hive Academy reserves the right to immediately suspend or permanently terminate your access to Atelier portals, cohort livestreams, and community servers without refund if you:

• Commit severe academic dishonesty, hackathon plagiarism, or assessment tampering.
• Engage in harassment, verbal abuse, hate speech, or stalking toward fellow students, mentors, or staff.
• Attempt to disrupt platform infrastructure via unauthorized penetration testing, scraping, or DDoS attacks.
• Distribute, resell, or publicly upload Atelier course curriculum, video recordings, or code solutions.

You may choose to delete your student account at any time from your profile settings, subject to the retention of statutory transaction records as outlined in our Privacy Policy.

To the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, Sphere Hive Academy, its directors, lecturers, mentors, and affiliates shall not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages—including loss of profits, data, employment opportunities, or goodwill—arising from your use of or inability to access our services.

In no event shall Sphere Hive Academy's aggregate financial liability exceed the total tuition fee actually paid by you for the specific cohort or service giving rise to the dispute in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

These Terms shall be governed by, interpreted, and construed in accordance with the substantive laws of theRepublic of India, without regard to conflict of law principles.

Any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of or relating to these Terms or your cohort enrollment that cannot be resolved through amicable informal negotiation shall be submitted to the exclusive jurisdiction of the competent courts located in Sullia / Mangaluru, Dakshina Kannada, Karnataka, India.

In compliance with Rule 3(2) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, Sphere Hive Academy has designated an official Grievance Redressal Officer to handle student inquiries, privacy requests, and formal complaints.