Grace Henley
Vestd has secured a growth investment from Foresight Group, our first institutional round after ten years of building, growing, and staying profitable under our own steam.
Foresight is a FTSE 250 investment manager with four decades of experience. They back high-growth companies across the UK, Europe, and Australia, and they know our market well.
It's a big moment, and we wanted to share what it means and where we're headed.
Why now?
The opportunity in front of us is genuinely exciting, and we want to move faster. PISCES, Vestd India, enterprise product features, AI... the roadmap is full, and this investment simply means we can reach our destinations sooner.
Ifty Nasir, Vestd's founder and CEO, puts it simply:
"Foresight is a top growth equity investor and we're delighted to have them join our journey. They have an excellent portfolio of companies, including some of the businesses that use our platform.
"We’ve consolidated our position in the UK SME and scaleup space. This funding will help to move us further forward with our enterprise roadmap and customer base.”
Salim Chantler, Foresight's Senior Investment Manager, adds: “Vestd operates in a highly attractive and underpenetrated market, with a differentiated product that is deeply embedded in customer workflows.
“From our experience working with growth businesses, manual equity issuance is a recurring pain point for management teams: complex, time-consuming and prone to error.
“Vestd solves this with a scalable, software-led approach, and we’re excited to support the team as they continue to grow, particularly in enterprise and international markets.”
What's PISCES, and why does it matter?
If you’re not familiar, PISCES, the Private Intermittent Securities and Capital Exchange System, is a new FCA-regulated framework for shareholders in private companies to buy and sell shares. And Vestd is one of the first companies to receive an operator's licence.
For the thousands of founders, employees, and investors holding equity in private businesses, this is a big deal. Liquidity has historically been elusive. PISCES changes that, and Vestd helped shape the infrastructure to make it work.
The enterprise chapter
Vestd started by making equity simple for startups and SMEs, but the need doesn't stop there.
Larger, more complex businesses with multi-class equity structures, or those listed on AIM and Aquis, have long had to make do with clunky, manual processes. That changes now.
This investment accelerates our enterprise product pipeline, extending what Vestd can do for companies that have outgrown simpler solutions.
AI is part of that too. Already deployed tactically across the business, we're now executing a broader strategic plan to make equity management faster, smarter, and more accessible at every level.
Vestd India is just getting started
We launched Vestd India last year in partnership with Trica Equity, and momentum is strong. India has one of the fastest-growing private company ecosystems in the world, and founders there face the same challenges that UK founders do. They deserve the same solutions.
Team photo from our recent retreat in Mumbai.
The bigger picture
And that's really what this is all about. Equity inclusion. Behind every great company are people who deserve a share of what they're building. Vestd's mission is to make that a reality for one billion people worldwide, whether they're in London, Mumbai, or anywhere else.
This investment puts fuel behind that mission. We're proud to have Foresight alongside us for the next chapter.
More to come!
And if our mission resonates with the kind of culture you’re creating, have a chat with one of our share scheme specialists.