About ASAD

For the moment your board asks “where are we on AI search”, and the answer has to hold up.

Through 2025, senior marketers across the Gulf kept hitting the same wall on every call: traditional SEO was holding, the brand was ranking, and the answer to “are we in ChatGPT” was still no. ASAD is the focused AI search team built inside ASAD to fix exactly that, with the ASAD bench behind it.

★ Built for senior in-house buyers
★ Working across UAE, KSA, GCC
★ ASAD has served brands across the UAE, KSA, wider GCC, India, UK, and US
★ Founder-led · senior team only
1.2M+
AI engine impressions tracked across active ASAD engagements (rolling 90 days)
Pooled, Client-Permitted
13.5K+
Cited brand mentions across the same engagement set
Counted Monthly
80%
Median lift in citation share within first 90 days of an ASAD programme (n = active engagements)
Engagement-Level Median
💰
AED  1.8M +
Estimated organic traffic value generated across the same engagement set
Ahrefs / SEMrush Proxy

Aggregated across active client engagements that have given written permission to publish portfolio-level metrics. Per-client analytics, prompt aggregator (Otterly & Profound), Ahrefs and SEMrush as the underlying sources. We do not publish per-client numbers without that client's named approval.

The story

Why a separate brand for AI search.

 We built ASAD because AI search demands a different approach than traditional SEO. As more buyers began using ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity, we saw brands ranking well on Google but missing from AI-generated answers.

Instead of adding AI search as another service, we created a specialist brand with a single focus. Backed by ASAD’s team and experience, ASAD helps businesses improve AI visibility through dedicated strategies, research, content, technical optimisation, and authority building.

Purpose & direction

Why we exist, and what we are building toward.

Why we exist

To help Gulf brands earn their place inside AI-generated answers.
Buyers in the UAE and KSA now search inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews before they ever land on a vendor site. We build the citations, the content, and the technical signals that put your brand inside those answers, so your buyer reads about you in the AI response, not the competitor’s.

What we are building toward

The AI search agency Gulf brands recommend to each other.
Over the next three years, AI answers will absorb more of what used to be search traffic. We are building ASAD so that, in 2028, when a marketing director in Dubai or Riyadh asks a peer for an AI search agency that actually knows what it is doing, our name is the one that gets shared.

Where ASAD sits 

ASAD runs four practice pillars. ASAD is the AI search team inside Growth.
When an ASAD engagement needs a design system, a new site build, or research support, the rest of ASAD’s team is on call. You do not have to manage three vendor relationships.

Research

User research, market intelligence, brand strategy, positioning workshops.

Design

Brand identity, web design, UX design, design systems, motion.

Build

Site builds, Webflow, WordPress, custom platforms, integration work.

Growth

ASAD lives here.
SEO, paid media, content, lifecycle marketing, and AI search — the ASAD specialism.
AI search team

The founder

ASAD was founded in Dubai by Shantanu Pandey. Over the years, ASAD has worked with brands across healthcare, B2B SaaS, FMCG, cybersecurity, the public sector, and consumer categories, in the UAE and the wider Gulf.

ASAD is the product Shantanu and the ASAD growth team built after they kept seeing the same problem on client retainers: brands ranking on Google but disappearing from the AI answers their buyers actually read. Public profile, interviews, and ASAD’s broader work are on the parent site.

Honest, on purpose

Things ASAD will not do.
We turn down work that does not fit. It saves the client a bad engagement, and it saves us a bad case study.

i.Guarantee AI Overview placement. Citation engines are non-deterministic. Anyone guaranteeing a specific position is selling you a story.

ii.White-label for another agency. For creative or brand agencies that do not run SEO themselves, yes, on a case-by-case basis. For SEO agencies, no — because we will not be the AI search team another SEO agency takes credit for.

iii.Run social, paid, or PPC alongside. We do one thing: AI search visibility. We refer clients to people we trust for the rest.

iv.Ship AI-only content drafts. The engines do not cite AI slop. Using it on client work would defeat the entire programme. Our editorial policy is public.

v.Lock you into a 12-month contract. Three-month minimum on retainers. After that, you can leave with 60 days notice. The work has to keep earning the relationship.

vi.Take on the cheapest brief in Dubai. We are mid-market and honest about it. If your budget is far below our scope, we will say so on the first call and refer you to people we trust at that tier.

Get started
Talk to the team about your AI visibility.

Start with a free 48-hour audit. We send you a clear report of where your brand stands across the engines that matter, with a roadmap of what we would do first.