Local expertise is everywhere here. Finding it is the hard part.
TALNTD is a local service marketplace for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman. This page is about why it exists and what we have decided it should and should not do. We are early, we have no users to boast about yet, and we would rather tell you what we are building than invent a story about what we have already built.
The Gulf service market runs on trust it cannot transfer.
Finding a good electrician here is not hard because good electricians are rare. It is hard because the information about who is good sits inside private group chats, and none of it is portable, comparable or checkable by anyone outside them.
A number forwarded through a building group chat works right up until you move, or your contact moves, or the person you were recommended is busy. Then you are starting from nothing again. The same problem runs in the other direction and is worse there: someone can do ten years of excellent work and still arrive at an eleventh customer as a stranger. All of that history exists. None of it is written down anywhere they can point to.
Price is the next thing that goes wrong. The customer has no idea what a fair number looks like, and the provider has no way to signal that theirs is fair, so the negotiation happens with both sides guessing. That asymmetry is where most bad experiences on both sides begin, and it is made considerably harder by the fact that the person doing the work and the person paying for it very often do not share a first language. Agreeing a scope and a price in a third language that neither of you is fluent in produces exactly the misunderstandings you would expect.
Then there is the shape of the work itself. The weekly clean and the monthly service call are the backbone of this market, and most tools model them as the same one-off booking repeated by hand, which is why changing a single visit turns into a mess. And underneath all of it, nothing is written down. When a job goes wrong, both sides have a sincere and completely different memory of what was agreed, and the argument is unwinnable by anyone.
The decisions the product is built on.
These are not values on a wall. Each one shows up as something concrete in the app, and each one cost us something to hold.
Verified identity on the side that turns up
Every provider and business submits a government issued ID and a selfie before they can trade. This makes signing up slower and it costs us providers who cannot be bothered. We think a marketplace where anyone can appear from nowhere is worth less than one where fewer people can, and we are willing to pay that price. Customers are not asked for documents, because the obligation should sit where the risk sits.
Reviews come from real work or not at all
A review can only be left after a completed booking, and provider and business ratings are kept separate so neither can borrow from the other. A ratings system that can be gamed is worse than no ratings system, because it launders a stranger into a trusted name.
Be transparent about cost, including ours
Prices are on the listing. Quotes are itemised into labour, parts and anything else. The negotiation is kept in writing where both sides can see every version of it. And what TALNTD charges is stated plainly: nothing today, and if that changes you will be told in advance rather than finding out on a bill.
People should work in their own language
The app runs in seventeen languages and chat messages are translated between them, so a conversation about a job happens in the language each person actually thinks in. Arabic is a full right to left interface, not a mirrored afterthought, and the whole app is built to be navigable with a screen reader.
Recurring work is a first class case
A series is one arrangement covering many visits, with proper ways to skip one, move one, or end the whole thing under notice terms agreed at the start. It is modelled that way because that is how the work actually happens here.
One person can be more than one thing
A provider is also somebody's customer. Customer, provider and business are roles on a single account and you switch between them without signing out, while ratings and history stay separated per role so nothing borrows credibility it did not earn.
languages, translated as you chat
English, Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam, Tamil, Sinhala, Nepali, Tagalog, Indonesian, Persian, Russian, German, Spanish, French and Turkish. That list is closer to the truth of who lives and works in this region than English and Arabic alone.
Things we are not going to do.
Easier to write than to keep, which is why they are here in public where you can hold us to them.
We will not invent social proof
No seeded reviews, no invented testimonials, no user numbers we cannot stand behind. This site currently contains none, because there is nothing yet that would be honest to claim.
We will not change the price quietly
TALNTD is free to use today: no listing fee, no subscription, and no share taken of what you agree with a customer. If a charge is ever introduced, it will be announced in advance and shown before you accept any booking. Discovering a cost after the fact is the fastest way to lose the people the platform depends on.
We will not sell your data to advertisers
Data goes to the other party of a booking, to the infrastructure and translation services we run on, and to law enforcement only where legally required. Those are named individually in the Privacy Policy rather than described vaguely.
We will not overstate what we can fix
Money is settled directly between the two of you, so there is nothing for us to reverse, and we are not going to imply otherwise. What we can do is hold verified identity records, keep the written record of what was agreed, and act on accounts that break the Terms.
Today, in one sentence. You agree a price in the app and settle it directly between yourselves, TALNTD takes nothing, and the app's job is to help you find each other, understand each other and keep a record of what you agreed.
countries, built in rather than bolted on
Currency, city lists and phone number formats follow the country your account is set to, and search results are scoped to it. You are never shown a provider who cannot reach you or a price in a currency you do not use.
What comes next, without the dates we cannot promise.
A marketplace is only useful where it is dense, so the rollout follows supply rather than a map. We would rather be genuinely usable in one city than thinly present in twenty, and that means providers before customers: an empty marketplace helps nobody, which is why joining is free and will stay free through the rollout.
In-app payments are not part of the launch. If they are ever added, they would be handled by a regulated provider, announced before they are switched on, and reflected here and in the Privacy Policy first. If a claim on this site does not match what the app actually does, that is a bug and we want to hear about it. The same goes for anything on the FAQ that has gone out of date.
Talk to us.
One address, read by the people building this. Feedback, complaints, press, partnerships and questions about your data all arrive in the same place.
If you are exercising a data right, email from the address on your TALNTD account so we can verify it is you.