TL;DR: I built a full-stack AI chatbot platform for IFDA, an Indian educational institute. It handles course discovery, lead capture, appointment scheduling, WhatsApp messaging, and comes with a complete admin CRM — all deployed on Vercel with a Neon PostgreSQL backend. Here's everything I learned, every system I built, and why I made the choices I did.
Why This Project Exists
Educational institutes spend enormous resources on human admissions counselors. Prospects ask the same questions repeatedly: What courses do you offer? How long is the program? What will I earn afterwards? And every unanswered query at 11 PM is a lost lead.
IFDA needed something smarter than a static FAQ page and cheaper than a 24/7 call center. The solution: a hybrid AI chatbot that could hold intelligent conversations about courses, capture leads, book counseling appointments, and hand off hot prospects to human staff — all while syncing with WhatsApp.
This is the full technical story of how I built it.
