Focused on bolstering private market dealings, UAE-based startup Zest Equity has secured $3.8 million in seed funding to enhance its digital platform.
The funding round, led by Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP) and joined by the Dubai Future District Fund (DFDF) and DASH Ventures, brings the total funding of Zest Equity to $5.7 million.
Founded in 2021 by Rawan Baddour and Zuhair Shamma, the platform initially started as a secondary trading marketplace but swiftly transformed into a comprehensive ecosystem facilitating swift and transparent online transactions for founders and venture capitalists.
Traditionally, these transactions occurred offline, leading to challenges such as obscurity and high costs. Zest Equity aims to bridge this gap by providing a tech-driven solution. Founders utilize Zest Equity’s tools to invite investors to fundraising rounds, share crucial information like pitch decks and cap tables, and monitor deal processes. The platform streamlines the process by offering legal infrastructure, enabling investors to form syndicates or special purpose vehicles efficiently.
“We have built a digital platform that allows [founders and investors] to share or get data that they want to share, and invite their network of people to participate in deals. On the other side, we provide them with the legal infrastructure to group all of these people that they have brought in into a single entity to keep the cap table clean and to streamline the whole process,” explained Rawan Baddour, Co-founder of Zest Equity.
The newly acquired funds will be utilized to develop additional tools, enhancing the platform’s efficiency further. Zest Equity is actively working on tools that enable startups to establish standardized processes for secondary share trading.
These tools will allow startups to control liquidity, approve information sharing for secondary transactions, and ensure transparency, accelerating sale approvals. The objective is to simplify investor access to liquidity while maintaining transparency and reliability.
Moreover, Zest Equity is eyeing expansion into emerging markets, particularly in North Africa, South Asia, and Turkey, where similar gaps in the market exist. The startup’s success in digitizing private market transactions in the Middle East signifies the growing need for such solutions, marking a significant milestone in the region’s tech landscape.
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