Press Release

FREED & Castler Partner To Build A Trustworthy Solution For The $16 Bn Indian Consumer Debt Market

  • FREED and Castler aims to scale monetary stress relief for Indian consumers with their enterprise escrow CRM.

FREED India’s First Debt Relief platform has announced its partnership with Castler, India’s largest Digital Escrow Platform. The collaboration aims to build a trustworthy solution to free debt-burdened consumers and scale monetary stress relief.

According to Reserve Bank of India data, outstanding personal loans rose 84 per cent to Rs 35.98 lakh crore in September 2022 from Rs 19.55 lakh crore in September 2018. FREED is a platform that helps people resolve their debt issues. Started by Ritesh Srivastava in August 2020 after he returned from the US, where he built a similar business resolving more than USD 2 Bn of consumer debt, FREED’s platform onboards debtors who need to resolve their debt issues. FREED works with Banks and other lenders to chart out a repayment plan so that individuals can clear their loans and start off on a clean slate. To date, FREED has helped 75000+ customers with a debt reduction of 56%.

Rajiv Indimath, CSO, FREED, said, “We are delighted to leverage Castler’s exceptional escrow platform through which we manage the flow of funds for MAARG, our loan consolidation & refinancing solution that delivers debt relief to stressed borrowers who are current on all their loan accounts. As a company dedicated to helping consumers regain their financial freedom, we rely heavily on partners who share our values and vision. Castler’s innovative approach to escrow services and commitment to making business dealings safer, more accessible, and compliant with RBI guidelines has been invaluable to us.”

Castler, backed by Zerodha and Venture Catalysts, is India’s largest Digital Escrow platform, with over 500 Enterprise Clients and over USD 500 mn in transactions under management. With over 100,000 Enterprise users and growing at a CAGR of 10%, Escrow Banking is poised to become a USD 200 Bn market by 2030. Caster is at the forefront of Digital Innovation in Escrow Banking and has built a modular Escrow-as-a-Service platform that works for any industry and any use case.

Vineet Singh, Co-founder and CEO of Castler, said, “Debt stress is a gigantic problem plaguing the majority of Indian households in one way or the other. Be it home loans for projects which are yet to be delivered or rising personal loan defaults. This is a real problem. Till FREED came along, debt collection was all about force, pressure, fear and bullying. We all know umpteen stories of the excesses that have happened. The FREED Model is built on the pillars of Trust and Empathy. We are elated to partner with FREED and become their pillar of trust through our unique digital escrow platform.”

Both partners intend to work closely together and solve for USD 16 Bn consumer debt relief market in India.

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