French tech firm Castor raises $23.5 million in latest funding

PARIS (Reuters) - French technology and data management company Castor, whose clients include Deliveroo and online fashion site Vestiaire Collective, said on Tuesday that it raised $23.5 million in a new funding round led by venture capital firm Blossom Capital.

The fundraising comes amid French President Emmanuel Macron's attempts to highlight the appeal of the country's burgeoning technology industry to overseas investors.

Insurance companies and large financial services firms have been ramping up their investments in technology, which allows them to automate some of their more labour-intensive and time-consuming processes such as fraud and money laundering checks.

Recent high-profile fundraisings in the French technology sector include French online bank Qonto, which this year raised 486 million euros ($519.5 million), while Shift Technology last year closed a $220 million fund-raising round.

"The next generation of successful scale-ups will need to make better use of their data and Castor is the most effective tool for that," said Blossom Capital partner Imran Ghory in a statement.

($1 = 0.9355 euros)

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)