Startups To Watch At Money20/20 Middle East 2025: Zest Equity
Zest Equity co-founder Rawan Baddour explains how, by redefining private market transactions across emerging markets, her startup is replacing fragmented dealmaking with speed and transparency.
According to Zest Equity co-founder Rawan Baddour, the problem her UAE-based startup is solving is the inefficiency and fragmentation of private market deal execution. “Today, transactions that involve millions of dollars are still being run through email threads, WhatsApp groups, and scattered spreadsheets,” she explains. “This slows deals down, drives up costs, and erodes investor trust.”
Zest Equity is thus building digital infrastructure to anchor private market transactions across emerging markets. Indeed, the startup’s core product is a fully digital transaction stack that allows deal leads to bring investors together into a single legal vehicle (SPV) and execute investments seamlessly. “Zest digitizes the entire lifecycle, covering onboarding, compliance, documentation, and funding flows, and shortens execution timelines from months to weeks, sometimes days,” Baddour explains. “In doing so, we make private markets accessible, transparent, and scalable.”
According to Baddour, Zest Equity’s offering is especially opportune given how private markets in the MENA and other emerging markets are at an inflection point. “Wealth is shifting, new asset classes are opening up, and investors expect global standards of governance and transparency,” she points out. “Without infrastructure like Zest, the ecosystem will remain fragmented, and transaction execution full of friction." Here, Baddour also points out that her startup is not another point-solution fintech. “We’re building the full transactional stack, end-to-end, and we’re doing it in markets where the infrastructure doesn’t yet exist in this form,” she says. “In the same way [global commerce platform] Stripe redefined payments with modern infrastructure, we’re redefining private market transactions, bringing simplicity, speed, and scalability to a traditionally fragmented space.”
Baddour believes the company’s traction speaks for itself, with it boasting of over US$175 million digitized over more than 150 transactions, while also being backed by notable investors like Prosus Ventures, Morgan Stanley and Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP). “We are trusted by deal leads because we offer something no one else does: institutional grade infrastructure that still moves at the speed of relationships,” Baddour says. “Looking ahead, our impact will be measured by trust and access. We want to reduce friction, lower costs, and make cross-border private market transactions as seamless as payments are today. If we succeed, we’ll unlock capital flows across the MENA, Asia, Africa, and beyond—and be part of the region’s transformation from a consumer of global capital, to a hub for it."
Founder To Founder: Zest Equity Co-Founder Rawan Baddour On Why Money20/20 Middle East Matters For Fintech Startups
“Money20/20 Middle East is offering a valuable platform bringing together all the relevant stakeholders. The region is undergoing rapid regulatory transformation, and fintech is no longer about payments alone; it’s about transforming the way we communicate and interact, building the rails for wealth creation, capital formation, and private investments. For Zest Equity, the event is a chance to showcase how the MENA is at the forefront of transformation, reshaping legacy systems, and setting new benchmarks in private market infrastructure.
Personally, I want to engage with peers, regulators, and investors who share this vision, and to put private market infrastructure at the center of the fintech conversation. The event’s significance for regional founders is that it signals maturity; we now have a platform that convenes global and regional leaders, where ideas and capital meet. For a founder, that means visibility, credibility, and acceleration.”
Pictured in the lead image is Rawan Baddour, co-founder of Zest Equity. Courtesy of Zest Equity.
Zest Equity is one of the companies featured in Inc. Arabia's selection of startups to look out for at Money20/20 Middle East 2025. For the full list, click here.
This article first appeared in a special edition of Inc. Arabia created for Money20/20 Middle East in September 2025. To read the full issue online, click here.
