Solving India’s trust deficit in financial transactions
It all started with a frustrating experience. When Vineet Singh sold his car to an online buying platform in 2019, they promised payment within 30 minutes. Instead, it took him 10 days of persistent follow-ups to get his money – and that was with his industry connections. For ordinary people, the situation would be far worse.
This incident revealed a big problem: there’s virtually no protection for consumers in high-value transactions in India. Even when dealing with established businesses, you’re at their mercy once they take your product.
This is the problem that Castler is trying to solve.
Watch our chat with the co-founders of Castler:
The Trust Problem in Indian Transactions
In India, payment fraud costs an estimated ₹75-100 crores daily. We’ve normalised this trust deficit – it’s why cash-on-delivery remains so popular despite the digital payment revolution.
Traditionally, escrow accounts (where a neutral third party holds funds until conditions are met) have been the solution for trust issues in big transactions like real estate deals. But setting up an escrow was expensive – costing upwards of ₹5 lakhs with complicated legal paperwork.
How Castler Works
Castler has democratized escrow by:
- Creating standardized agreements that eliminate expensive legal fees
- Building automated workflows on top of banking infrastructure
- Partnering with licensed trustees who approve transactions through their platform
- Making the entire process affordable for a wider range of transactions
While they began with a consumer focus, COVID-19 pushed them toward enterprise clients. Today, they arrange escrow for businesses handling complex financial workflows – from supply chain financing to co-lending partnerships.
When the RBI mandated in late 2023 that financial institutions must escrow their IT vendors’ source code, Castler developed a cloud-native solution. This moved what was previously a physical process (storing code on hard drives in vaults) into the digital age with continuous updates and automated verification.
Rainmatter backed Castler because they’re addressing a major infrastructure need in India’s financial ecosystem – building the trust layers essential for secure transactions. That sticks to our core expertise and ties in with our aim to grow and support the fintech infrastructure of our country.
