This app changes how UAE can hire musicians, artists, and even magicians

Khaleej Times

a day ago

For three decades, Nizar Ahmadi operated in the upper tiers of global finance. Now, he's channeling that operational discipline into a mission that's decidedly human: connecting magicians, DJs, dancers, painters, and performers directly with the people who want to hire them — without commissions or gatekeepers.
'I've been in banking for over 30 years,' he says in a chat with City Times . The itch to build in the arts, though, never left. 'Music and entertainment, since I was a kid, I've been exposed to it through my parents, through friends, which I had loved… And it's always stayed in the back of my mind. And I always wanted to get involved in it. I just didn't know how.' Recommended For You
The 'how' arrived after Covid. 'After Covid, when tech came in, the idea came and I actually spent about three, four months just with a blackboard in my room, putting the user journey together,' he said.
That idea became MADE — short for Music, Arts, Dance, Entertainment — a Dubai-born platform where creatives can post video showcases, set prices, be vetted for authenticity, and connect with clients in minutes.
Ahmadi's frustration with the old discovery model is visceral — those fleeting living-room moments where someone sings beautifully and then, nothing. 'What about the 99 per cent talents that are out there that are unseen?' he asks. The premise of MADE is simple: 'Let's have thousand people looking at the talents that are out there instead of a thousand talents being seen by one or two agents.'
That extends to access. 'I needed entertainment to come into everybody's lives," he said. "It's not a rich man's game.'
MADE allows a hotel with a tight budget, a restaurant just starting out, or a parent planning a birthday to find talent at transparent prices, fast. 'All they have to do is showcase their talent clearly, where we have to do a bit of vetting to make sure that they do have a talent… It's free for them to showcase their talent and post a free video.'
The driver, he adds, is livelihood: 'A person can eat. A person can pay his rent that night and they're exposed.' UAE as a launchpad
If MADE's ethos is global, its launchpad is intentionally local. 'UAE is such a melting hub for everybody… it's the best place to come in because entertainment is growing,' Ahmadi says, noting government-backed cultural momentum and an events calendar that needs talent at every price tier. 'We've launched four or five months ago. We've gotten a couple of thousand talents to begin with.'
Early on, the team nudged creators to raise their presentation game: 'We had to filter some and clean up some posts and send them messages to upgrade the quality of the posts… you're going to stop to the ones that catch your eye.'
A mentor gave him another shorthand: 'Basically this is the Uber of talents.' But he stresses the role: 'We're not competing with anyone. We're facilitating and connecting talent to talent seekers in minutes.'
For all the tech, this is still about human habits. When asked about the challenges, he takes a minute to ponder. 'From many, many sessions that we've had… the main bottleneck for talents, they're lazy," he says. "I need them to come and put a profile and put a video.'
Clients have habits too. He adds, 'For the talent seeker, they're wary because they're so used to having an events manager… They think it's already vetted.'
MADE's answer is to keep the process simple but rigorous: vet profiles for authenticity and performance, then make contact instantaneous. 'The connection is instantaneous… Here, the pricing is right there. You see the pricing, you connect, you can meet them in an hour.'
The platform also serves makers through a second track: 'On Made, you have two platforms. You have a performance platform and you have a made to sell platform… it's not an e-commerce, it's a one-to-one where they meet.'
That covers independent fashion, jewelry, sculpture — work you might see at a pop-up or gallery, now discoverable without a storefront. Commission-free by design
On monetisation, Ahmadi is explicit: 'We are not taking any commission.' Growth, he says, is about scale and simple paid tiers. 'We're looking at the scalability and the numbers game over the next couple of years.'
Because MADE doesn't skim fees, there's no incentive to 'go behind our back' after a first booking. 'It's futile… we're not taking a penny. So why leave when you have a thousand people looking at you?'
That philosophy underpins the mission: 'The philosophy we've built it to begin with is two things, is to empower talents, increase their livelihood, and expose talent seekers to talents that they never thought existed or they haven't seen.'
Early traction matters more than press clippings. 'We have quite a few people that were connected,' Ahmadi says. 'There are people that got connected after a day and there's people that got connected after two or three months.' The genres span 'bands… musicians, DJs, some artwork and painters.' AI: Filter, accelerate, but don't replace
Ask Ahmadi about AI and he's candid. 'I feel sorry for a lot of the artists and musicians out there today,' he says.
He isn't doom-scrolling, though; he's building. 'There's three things that I want AI for. It's to filter through a lot of the posts… AI is going to be implemented in the app in January, and what we're trying to do is expedite the connection even faster.'
He also wants MADE to surface in external AI searches: 'People will go on AI… it will show you the top five searches. So we will strive to be one of the top five names.'
What he won't concede is the core experience. 'We are blessed and lucky that the performances are still done by people… you still need that human factor.'
As for 'future-proof'? He adds, 'I'm not going to say future-proof… AI is a must. And we have to incorporate AI into certain angles to facilitate and make the user journey easier, friendlier. But using humans is extremely important.' What comes next?
Geographically, the expansion arc is clear: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, then global hubs in Europe, South America, and the Far East. Strategically, the platform continues refining the 'supply of talent' and the speed of connection. Emotionally, the north star hasn't changed. 'Seeing the smile on their faces,' he says of newly booked performers, 'nothing happier than when a person has talent and he's been discovered'.
And if you're looking for the founder's identity, he says, 'I see myself as somebody that just wants to empower talent. Just to be a small bandage in this world to bring out the talented people out there that are unseen and unheard and undiscovered.' [e-mail]
Husain Rizvi is a Senior Features Writer who covers entertainment and lifestyle stories and has a profound interest in tech (games) and sports. When he's not working, you can find him at the gym, or finishing a boss fight in a video game.