Four friends.
One question.
"Why is applying to university across India and the Netherlands so much harder than it has to be?"
We're Suhaan, Smyaan, Tvisha and Alba — four friends from Mumbai. Three of us are Dutch nationals who grew up in India. Alba is an Indian national. All of us are incoming students to the Netherlands.
When we started applying, we realised something none of us expected: there's almost nothing out there for students moving between India and the Netherlands. Plenty of guides exist for India to the US, the UK, Canada, Australia. India to the Netherlands? A trickle. The information is scattered, often outdated, sometimes contradictory.
We figured it out the slow, frustrating way — calling universities directly, scraping forum threads, asking older friends who'd done it before, sometimes just guessing. We made mistakes. We wasted time. And when we finally got our offers, we realised the next batch of students would be doing the exact same thing.
So we built this.
Indo-Dutch Lab is a student-led community for anyone moving in either direction between India and the Netherlands for higher education. We curate journalism and articles already published on the topic, share our own stories and videos, and try to be the resource we wished we'd had.
We're not consultants. We're not government. We're not a university. We're four students with a year of frustration behind us and the hope that the next person doesn't have to start from zero.
The founders.
Three Dutch nationals raised in India and one Indian national — all incoming students to the Netherlands.
What we are.
What we're not.
We are: a community of students helping students. A place to share what we've learned. A small archive of relevant articles and stories.
We are not: a recruiting agency, a consultancy, a government body, or affiliated with any university. We don't give official advice. We share what worked for us — that's it.