Castler, a global escrow banking platform, has successfully raised $5 million in a pre-Series A funding round. The round was co-led by Capital 2B, an Info Edge fund, and IIFL Fintech Fund. Stride Ventures and Piper Serica also participated, alongside returning investors Zerodha, Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns, and FAAD Network.
In previous funding rounds in 2021, Castler secured $1.5 million in a pre-seed and seed round from Zerodha, Venture Catalysts, 9Unicorns, FAAD Network, Lets Venture, and AngelList.
The newly acquired capital will be utilized to expand Castler’s domestic and cross-border escrow product portfolio. The company plans to establish partnerships with 25 banks and aims to achieve substantial business growth over the next few years.
Co-founded by Vineet Singh and Dinesh Kumar in April 2021, Castler envisions building a global escrow platform that prioritizes good governance and responsible execution for both domestic and cross-border transactions. To further its mission, Castler has recently appointed Kumar Amit, former VP of Razorpay, as a co-founder and COO to drive business scaling efforts.
Castler aims to simplify and digitize escrow banking, ensuring its widespread adoption and making trust an inherent aspect of digital transactions and smart contracts. The company’s unique banking stack acts as middleware between banks and enterprises, addressing challenges related to evolving business and revenue models, complex transaction flows, money sources, identity verification, fraud management, and customer-consumer protection.
With a network of 10 banking partners, Castler has earned the trust of over 500 enterprises and currently manages transactions exceeding Rs 5,000 crore on a monthly basis.
