Fast Ventures
Dubai marketing holding company founded by Waseem Afzal, owner of Platformance and others, whose Fast Foundry arm launched a USD 3M fund for early-stage MENA startups in November 2025.
Industry: Marketing holding company and venture studio | Location: Dubai, United Arab Emirates | Founded: 2023
About Fast Ventures
Fast Ventures, which trades as Fast, is a marketing, technology and consumer group based in Dubai. The name stands for Future Adaptive Specialist Teams. Its address is 202 Emmay Tower in Dubai Internet City, and it also has an office in Riyadh. Its website describes four groups of businesses: technologies, services, ventures and investment, and an expansion network.
Waseem Afzal founded the group and is its chief executive. He spent 16 years at Omnicom Media Group and three years at TikTok, where he oversaw advertising monetisation in the Middle East, before starting Platformance and then the holding company. Wamda reported in November 2025 that Fast Ventures was founded in 2023. Other named leaders on the website include Hassan Shoker, Wade Eagar, Azeem Afzal, Amjad Puliyali and Hamza Madi.
The technologies group includes Platformance, an outcomes-based advertising company; Catalist, a marketplace for curated premium ad inventory; and Clout Scout, a creator discovery platform. The services group includes Lion, a creative agency; Calibrate Commerce, which handles integrated digital advertising; Zero Degrees, which builds digital products; and Matte, a marketing technology integration business. The ventures arm consists of Fast Foundry and Fast Labs, which works on artificial intelligence. The website describes a Growth Operating System that combines artificial intelligence, data and automation, and states 110 or more employees, 180 or more clients and eight subsidiaries. An interview published in July 2025 gave about 140 people, six entities and more than 200 advertisers at Platformance.
In November 2025 the group launched Fast Foundry, an investment arm and venture studio backed by a 3 million US dollar fund for early-stage startups in the Middle East and North Africa. Wamda dated it 24 November. The fund targets advertising technology, retail technology, creator-economy tools and artificial intelligence marketing products, and offers workspace in Dubai or Riyadh, preferred cloud credits and support from Platformance, Lion and Calibrate.
Afzal told Enterprise in 2025 that the group is bootstrapped, and no outside funding has been reported.
Leadership
- Waseem Afzal, Founder and CEO
- Hassan Shoker, Dealmaker Extraordinaire (Group Chief Commercial Officer, Platformance)
- Wade Eagar, Strategy and Marketing Lead
- Azeem Afzal, Founder of LION and Zero Degrees
- Amjad Puliyali, Saudi Arabia lead
- Hamza Madi, General Manager, Emerging Markets (Platformance)