Awez Darbar

Timeline

1. 1993Born on 16 March in Mumbai to the composer Ismail Darbar and Farzana Shaikh.The date is carried by profile sites; he has not confirmed one publicly.
2. 2010sAttends St. Stanislaus High School in Bandra and later LTM College of Commerce and Economics, where he forms a dance crew and starts posting videos.
3. 2018 to 2019Builds a following on TikTok with short choreographed routines, at a time when the platform was the fastest route to a young Indian audience.
4. 2019Co-founds B You Academy with his brother Zaid Darbar and Tejal Pimpley, turning a content career into a dance school.
5. 2020 to 2022Moves to Instagram Reels after TikTok is banned in India, and appears in music videos including Half Boyfriend, Tum Na Ho, Dholida Dhol Re and Baby Bewafa.
6. 2025Enters Bigg Boss 19 on 24 August with his partner, the creator Nagma Mirajkar.
7. 2025Evicted on 28 September, day 35 of the season, after finishing last among the bottom three.Nagma Mirajkar had been evicted two weeks earlier, on day 21.
8. 2026Continues with the academy, brand work and dance content, with no television project announced after the season.

Who Awez Darbar is

Awez Darbar is a choreographer who became famous without choreographing anything anybody watched for more than a minute. His route was the short video: a routine, a hook, a reaction, posted often enough that the audience grew before the work did. By the time he was cast on Bigg Boss 19 he had a following in the millions across two platforms and a dance academy with his name on it.^[1]

He is also, inescapably, the son of Ismail Darbar, the composer who wrote the music for Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Devdas. That inheritance is the part of his story that Indian coverage returns to, and it is worth being precise about what it did and did not do. It gave him a musical household and a family that understood the industry. It did not give him a following, which he built himself on a platform his father had no reason to understand.^[1]

The third fact that defines him is that he is a creator rather than an actor or a singer. He performs in music videos rather than starring in films, teaches dance rather than touring a show, and sells brand campaigns rather than tickets. That is a legitimate career in the Indian market of the 2020s, and it is a career that a reality show can lift or expose.^[1]

Bandra, a composer's house and a brother in the same trade

Darbar grew up in Mumbai, in a household built around film music. His father, Ismail Darbar, is one of the composers associated with the first phase of Sanjay Leela Bhansali's films, and his mother is Farzana Shaikh. He attended St. Stanislaus High School in Bandra, a school with a long record of producing performers, and later LTM College of Commerce and Economics.^[1]

He has four siblings who matter to the public record. His brother Zaid Darbar is a creator and actor who married Gauahar Khan, the winner of Bigg Boss 14. His sisters Anam and Moonzarin appear in family content, and he has a half brother, Imaan. The family is, in effect, a small production house: collaborations between the brothers are content, and the weddings and babies are covered.^[1]

It was at college that he formed a dance crew called Ace and started putting videos online. That detail is the ordinary origin story of an Indian creator of his generation, and it explains the shape of what came later: he learned in a group, on a camera, with no stage and no choreographer to answer to.^[1]

TikTok, Reels and the short video decade

His breakthrough came on TikTok, and then on Instagram Reels after TikTok was banned in India in 2020. The two platforms rewarded the same skills: a routine that reads in three seconds, a face that holds the frame, and an upload schedule that does not stop. Darbar had all three, and he had a dance vocabulary that translated into a living room.^[1]

What made him more durable than most of the TikTok generation was the move into teaching and into music videos. A creator whose only asset is a following has to keep feeding the algorithm. A creator who can run a class, choreograph for a label and appear in a video has several incomes and a reason for the industry to call him.^[1]

The numbers attached to him, millions of followers across the two platforms, are the part of the profile that gets quoted and the part that is least reliable. Follower counts move, and the profile that reports them says so. What is not in doubt is that he was one of the largest dance creators in the country by 2025, which is why a show that casts for reach cast him.^[1]

B You Academy and the business of dance

In 2019 Darbar co-founded B You Academy with his brother Zaid Darbar and Tejal Pimpley. A dance academy is a different business from a content channel: it has premises, a timetable, students who pay by the month, and a reputation that depends on whether the classes are any good. It also gives a choreographer somewhere to train the next set of performers, which is how dance scenes in a city actually grow.^[1]

He is also associated with Atrangz Studio, a creative outfit used for branded content, choreography and collaborations between creators. Between the two, his income has a floor that does not depend on an algorithm: classes, workshops and commissioned work.^[1]

That structure is why his eviction from Bigg Boss did not much change his year. For a creator whose living is workshops and brand campaigns, five weeks on national television is marketing. For a television actor it would have been the season's main income.^[1]

Music videos, and the acting question

His screen work is mostly music videos: Half Boyfriend, Mera Mehboob, Tum Na Ho, Dholida Dhol Re, Baby Bewafa and Conga. They are the natural format for a dancer with a following, because a music video needs movement and a face and does not need dialogue. Several of them did well enough to be treated as his mainstream credits rather than as creator projects.^[1]

He has not made the move into fiction, and the record does not suggest he has tried hard. Acting requires a different training and a different risk, and the Indian market has been unkind to creators who assume their following transfers. His appearances have stayed inside the formats where he is the reason to watch rather than a part in someone else's story.^[1]

Bigg Boss was the test of the other side of that: whether the audience that watches his videos would vote for him as a person. The answer, in the numbers, was no.^[2]

Bigg Boss 19: in with Nagma, out by week five

Darbar entered Bigg Boss 19 on 24 August 2025, on the premiere, alongside his partner, the creator and dancer Nagma Mirajkar. A couple entering together is one of the format's reliable devices: it guarantees a story line in the first week and a dilemma later, when one of them is nominated.^[2][3]

It did not work in their favour. Both were quiet in a house built for confrontation, and the coverage of the season is blunt about it. WION's report on his eviction says the couple, despite their following, failed to make an impression with their game, and that Salman Khan had advised them to step up before the audience did it for them.^[2]

Nagma Mirajkar was evicted on day 21, in the third week. Darbar followed on day 35. A couple that enters together and leaves within a fortnight of each other has spent the middle of the season apart inside the same house, which is the format's cruellest arrangement and, from a production point of view, its most efficient.^[3]

The eviction night

On 28 September 2025, a Sunday, Darbar was evicted. Six contestants were nominated that week: Awez Darbar, Ashnoor Kaur, Pranit More, Gaurav Khanna, Mridul Tiwari and Neelam Giri. The bottom three were Darbar, Kaur and More, and Darbar had the fewest votes of the three.^[2]

The timing made it worse. Gauahar Khan, his sister in law and a former winner of the show, had visited the house the day before as part of the family week, and told him on camera that he had been quiet on the issues he should have been fighting about. Her words, as reported, were that if he did not fight his own battle, nobody would. He was out the next night.^[2]

The Weekend Ka Vaar episode also carried a film promotion, with Varun Dhawan, Janhvi Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra, Rohit Saraf and Maniesh Paul on set for Sunny Sanskari Ki Tulsi Kumari. An eviction sharing an episode with a five star promotional segment is the standard arrangement, and it means the exit gets about four minutes.^[2]

His friends in the house, among them Abhishek Bajaj and Nehal Chudasama, were visibly upset. Both of them would be out themselves within seven weeks.^[2][3]

What the season showed

The season's own record puts Darbar sixteenth of eighteen in the order of exit, out on day 35 of 105. He was in the house for exactly a third of it. The three contestants who finished above him and the fourteen who outlasted him were, with a few exceptions, better at being watched than at being followed.^[3]

That is the specific lesson of his run. A creator's audience is an audience for a finished thing, thirty seconds long, edited and posted. A reality show asks for an unfinished person, on camera, for a hundred days. The skills do not transfer, and Bigg Boss 19 demonstrated it twice in the same family, since his partner went out two weeks before him.^[2][3]

It also demonstrated the opposite for the show. Casting creators brings an audience that does not vote, which is a problem the format has had for several seasons and has not solved.^[3]

After the house

Darbar went back to the work he had before the season: the academy, brand campaigns, dance content and music videos. Nothing in the record suggests a television project or a film followed the show, and for a creator of his profile that is not a setback. The following he had in August 2025 he still had in 2026, and the show did not damage it.^[1]

The family connection has continued to generate coverage. His brother Zaid and Gauahar Khan are followed closely enough that a visit to the Bigg Boss house became a story in itself, and the Darbar family's milestones are covered as entertainment news. It is a form of attention that has nothing to do with his own work and that he has not tried to escape.^[1]

He has not spoken publicly about the eviction in the terms the show's coverage used. The reported account is of a contestant who was told, on camera, by the person closest to the industry in his family, that he was not doing enough, and who was then voted out. That is the record, and it is the last thing the season said about him.^[2]

What has not been confirmed

His date of birth, 16 March 1993, comes from profile sites. There is no Wikipedia entry for him, and he has not confirmed a date himself, so the age that circulates should be treated as reported rather than established.^[1]

His net worth is an estimate built from assumed brand rates and academy revenue, and it is not a disclosure. His fee for Bigg Boss 19 has not been published by him or by the makers. His height and weight are aggregator figures of the usual kind.^[1]

The status of his relationship with Nagma Mirajkar is described in the coverage as a public partnership rather than an engagement or a marriage, and neither of them has announced anything further. The follower counts attributed to him differ between sources and change with time, which is why no figure is stated here as a fact. His college degree is also unconfirmed beyond the name of the college, and no source used here sets out what he studied.