Other services
Beyond student placement
Co Lab Education offers professional services for institutions and partners in international education. Drawing on more than twelve years of operating experience across the Middle East and South Asia.
More than twelve years operating in international education across the Middle East and South Asia.
A multilingual platform delivered in English, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi.
Founder is a current MSc student at Oxford Saïd Business School.
What else we do
Three services, scoped to what you need
White-labelling solutions
Custom assessment platforms, multilingual marketing sites, course discovery engines, and bespoke educational technology, built and deployed under your brand.
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Strategic consultation
Advisory engagements drawing on more than twelve years of operating leadership in international student recruitment across the Middle East and South Asia.
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Custom technology development
AI assessment, retrieval-grounded chatbots, course matching engines, document intelligence, and multilingual platforms designed and shipped for institutions and partners.
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White-labelling solutions
Software that runs under your brand.
We design and build assessment platforms, multilingual marketing sites, course discovery and matching engines, document-intelligence tools, and student-facing dashboards. You own the software, you control the brand, and we operate or hand over depending on what you need.
See what we can buildWhat we can build
- •AI-marked assessment platforms (writing and speaking).
- •Multilingual marketing and lead-capture sites.
- •Course discovery and matching engines.
- •Document intelligence for credentials and visa paperwork.
- •Student dashboards and admissions portals.
Strategic consultation
Twelve years of operating leadership, available as an advisory engagement.
We help institutions, operators, and edtech businesses enter or scale in the Middle East and South Asia. The work is shaped by direct, in-country experience running international student recruitment, examination operations, and partner-channel programmes.
Market entry
Setting up an in-market presence in the Middle East or South Asia, including partner mix and activation plan.
Agent partner networks
Network design, commission models, quality gating, and conversion improvement.
Test centre operations
Candidate funnel, examiner integration, capacity planning, and cohort management.
University partnerships
Positioning, application volume planning, and intake quality controls.
Recruitment strategy
Cohort sizing, channel mix, cost-per-enrolment, retention.
Founder and operator mentorship
Drawing on twelve years of operating leadership in this market.
Custom technology development
When buying off the shelf does not fit.
We design and build production-grade software for educational businesses. AI tools, multilingual platforms, custom data infrastructure, and integrations with the systems you already run.
AI assessment
Criterion-decomposed marking, calibration against held-out examiner sets, and fail-closed safety.
Retrieval chatbots
Counsellor and support bots grounded in your institutional content, with citations.
Course matching
Recommendation engines that match a student's profile to programmes in your catalogue.
Multilingual platforms
Arabic right-to-left, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and English, designed for parity across languages.
Document intelligence
Credential verification, visa-document checks, and reference parsing.
Admissions infrastructure
Student dashboards, application tracking, and bespoke admissions workflows.
How we work
Three steps, agreed in writing
Discovery call
Twenty minutes, free, no obligation. We size the deal in the first call.
Scoped pilot
Two to four weeks. Fixed scope, written brief, named deliverables.
Live deployment
Week-by-week, with a written change log and an owner on each side.
The founder
Shabaz Syed
More than twelve years in international education, formerly Country Manager for a major international IELTS provider across the Middle East. Currently an MSc student at Oxford Saïd Business School. Sole founder of Colab Ventures Ltd (UK company 16246472).
Questions we get
Honest answers, before the call
Who is this page for
Institutions, test centres, prep schools, universities, accelerators, and operators in international education who are looking for a partner that can build, advise, or run programmes alongside them. The student-placement service that Co Lab Education is best known for is described on the home page and on the How It Works page; the services below are everything else we offer.
How is the work priced
We scope per engagement. White-labelling deployments are typically priced per project, per cohort, or per annual licence. Consultation is by retainer or by project. Custom technology development is priced against a written brief. We size the deal in the first call rather than publish a fixed number, because every centre and every institution is different.
How long does an engagement take
A discovery call takes twenty minutes. A consultation engagement typically runs from one to three months depending on scope. A white-labelled platform deployment is usually six to twelve weeks for a first version, agreed in writing before any work starts.
Where does the data sit, and who owns it
Your data stays with you. We are a processor, not a controller. A Data Processing Agreement is available on request, and student data sits in named jurisdictions in the United Kingdom and the European Union by default. Anything else is negotiated as part of the engagement.
Which languages are supported
Four languages by default: English, Arabic with right-to-left layout, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi. We add languages on request.
Can we talk before committing to anything
Yes. The first twenty-minute call is free and there is no obligation. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner for what you need, and if we are not, we will point you to someone who is.
Twenty minutes, free, no obligation.
Tell us what you are trying to build, run, or change. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right partner.
Book a discovery call