01 / TRAINING
Courses and enrollment
Applications, enrollment, and outcomes across multiple batches and courses like Unity 3D, Unreal Engine, and 3D animation, onsite in Karachi and Lahore and online.
CASE STUDY / NATIONAL PLATFORM
The system running Pakistan's national gaming and animation program.
CEGA is a government-backed hub for training, startup incubation, co-working, and community events, used by more than 10,000 students. I designed and built the whole platform on my own, replacing an old WordPress site that could not keep up with the program it was meant to run.
- 10,000+
- 3,392
- 200+
- 14+
- MY ROLE
- Full-stack developer, solo build and maintenance
- CLIENT
- CEGA, Center of Excellence in Gaming & Animation
- BACKED BY
- Ministry of IT & Telecom, Ignite National Technology Fund
- BUILT WITH
- Next.js, MongoDB, OpenAI, NextAuth
- CENTERS
- Karachi and Lahore, plus online
- STATUS
- Live at cega.com.pk
Read this in three layers: the story of the problem and the fix, the automation that now runs without staff, and a plain-English breakdown of the technology for both technical and non-technical readers.
THE PROBLEM
Growing attention, no system to catch it
CEGA runs Pakistan's national training program for gaming and animation. When I came in, the entire thing ran on a basic WordPress website.
It barely showed up in Google, so the growing interest the program was earning had nowhere useful to land. More importantly, there was no real system behind the site. There was no proper way to take and verify student applications, no way for judges to score applicants fairly, no automatic emails when someone applied or got accepted, and no way to book a co-working seat, a rendering lab, or a meeting room online. Everything happened by hand, or did not happen at all. Rising demand was a problem instead of an asset, because the site had no way to turn visitors into enrolled students, scored applicants, and booked sessions.
WHAT CEGA ACTUALLY IS
Four programs, one platform
CEGA is not a single website. It is four connected programs, each with its own applications, data, and reporting, all run from one system I built and maintain.
02 / INCUBATION
Startup evaluation
A two-phase judging process that screens founders on market fit, then runs a deeper investment-grade review on the finalists.
03 / CO-WORKING
Seats and labs
Bookings and occupancy for co-working seats, meeting rooms, and a rendering lab, tracked per center.
04 / COMMUNITY
Events and participation
Event hosting, bookings, and participant tracking that ties the whole community together.
WHAT RUNS ON ITS OWN
The work the platform does without staff
This is the real value of the build. Jobs that used to need a person now happen automatically, correctly, every time.
01
Student applications and verification
Multi-step forms that check and save answers as the student types, then confirm the submission. No manual data entry.
Now: self-serve and verified
02
Emails that send themselves
A new sign-up, a booking, a judge's score, or an accept or reject decision each trigger the right email on their own.
Now: sent automatically
03
Two-phase judge scoring
Applicants are scored in two rounds. Each judge sees only their own list, and the system stops any judge from overwriting another's score.
Now: tracked and locked
04
Bookings with conflict prevention
Seats, rooms, and the rendering lab are booked online, and the system blocks double-bookings before they happen.
Now: real-time availability
05
AI assistant, 24/7
A chatbot answers applicant questions about courses, programs, and locations instantly, at any hour, so the team stops repeating itself.
Now: answered instantly
06
One live dashboard
Applications, enrollment, bookings, and attendance roll up into one dashboard, filterable by batch, city, and date.
Now: one live view
INSIDE THE PLATFORM
Real dashboards, real numbers
Training overview
3,392 applicants and 717 enrolled students in a single batch, broken down live by age, education, gender, and city across 126 cities.
Co-working and rendering lab
733 applications and 590 people served, with daily seat occupancy per center and 61 rendering-lab bookings tracked against requested hours.
Community and events
591 bookings, 110 events hosted, and 887 participants (532 unique), filterable by center and date range.
City-level breakdown
Registrations by course for Karachi (516) and Lahore (538), each with its own live filters for batch, delivery mode, and course.
FAIR, TRACKED JUDGING
Two rounds of scoring, no disputes
Phase 1, concept and market fit
Each applicant is scored across six weighted criteria, with a composite average and a qualify or reject status.
Phase 2, final evaluation
An investment-grade review on the finalist pool, with a portfolio-readiness score.
AI assistant
Answers course questions in real time.
THE TECHNOLOGY
What it is built with, in plain words
Every part of the platform is listed below twice: once in plain English, and once with the actual tool. A non-technical reader can follow the middle column; a technical reader can check the right one.
The website and pages
Everything visitors see: fast pages, forms, and dashboards that work on phone and desktop.
Next.js, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
The database
Where every applicant, booking, score, and record is stored and searched.
MongoDB Atlas, Mongoose
Logins and roles
Secure sign-in that shows admins, judges, and students only what they are allowed to see.
NextAuth, JWT, bcrypt
The AI assistant
The chatbot that answers questions about courses and programs on its own.
OpenAI GPT-4
Automatic emails
Confirmations, booking notices, and status updates that send themselves.
NodeMailer
Images and files
Uploads and media handled and delivered quickly.
Cloudinary
Hosting
Keeps the site fast and online for thousands of users.
Vercel edge network
The hardest part was the judge scoring. Several judges can score the same applicant at the same time, each score is recorded and tied to that judge, and the system makes sure no one can ever overwrite another judge's work.
Next.js 15TypeScriptMongoDBNextAuthOpenAI GPT-4NodeMailerCloudinaryTailwind CSSVercel
WHAT THIS MEANS FOR YOU
The same parts, any size project
CEGA is a large platform, but it is built from the same building blocks I use on smaller jobs. Whatever you need, one part of this project already proves I can do it.
WEBSITE
Need a website? This is the same foundation, just smaller and faster to build, and made to actually show up in search.
AI
Want AI on your site? The assistant here is the same kind of AI feature I can add to yours, for support, sales, or bookings.
AUTOMATION
Tired of manual work? The automatic emails, scoring, and bookings are automation. The same idea removes busywork like invoices, reminders, and reports.
WEB APP
Need something bigger? This handles logins, roles, dashboards, and thousands of users without breaking. Your custom tool or portal is well within range.
Have a project in mind?
A website, an AI feature, an automation, or a full web app. One developer, start to finish.