Digital escrow platform Castler raises $5M from Capital 2B, IIFL Fintech Fund, others

Global escrow banking platform Castler has raised $5 million in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Capital 2B (an Info Edge fund) and IIFL Fintech Fund. Stride Ventures & Piper Serica also participated in the funding round along with returning investors Zerodha, Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns, and FAAD Network.

The startup plans to use the raised capital to further grow its domestic and cross-border escrow product portfolio, expand its banking partnerships to 25 banks and grow its business 10 times over the next couple of years.

Castler’s Escrow Banking Stack is the middle-ware between banks and enterprises to solve the problems of ever-changing business and revenue models, complex transaction flows, source of money, identity verification, fraud management and customer-consumer protection.

Founded in 2021 by Vineet Singh and Dinesh Kumar, The company claims to have working with 10 Banking Partners and is the trusted escrow solution for over 500 enterprises and manages over Rs 5,000 crores in transactions every month.

Statements:

“Trust is the most important digital currency and Castler is building the epitome of Trust -as-a-Service .Our astronomic growth, achieved with a team of just 20 people, is a testament to the strength and capabilities of our unique digital escrow product.” said Vineet Singh, Co-founder & CEO, Castler.

Vibhore Sharma, Partner, Capital 2B, who led the $5 million Pre Series A round of Castler, said in a statement, “Escrow banking is becoming the core banking stack anchoring most businesses and use cases. Apart from the regulator-mandated usage in capital markets, real estate, liquidation & insolvency and government subsidies, Escrow is now becoming the core stack powering financial transactions across the value chain and adds an additional but imperative layer of security and transparency. Castler aims to simplify and completely digitize escrow banking for mass adoption and make trust an implicit part of all digital transactions and smart contracts.”

“Castler’s solution combining Escrow + Trustee + Transaction Tools is a game changer for the banking industry. Castler’s ability to build a solution which works for both domestic and cross border (export-import) transactions is a unique achievement and opens a market worth hundreds of billions of dollars. We are excited to be partnering with them on their journey of democratizing Escrow Banking for consumers, SMEs and Enterprises”, said Mehekka Oberoi, Head of IIFL Fintech Fund.

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