When serial edtech entrepreneur Nik Higgins upped sticks from Manchester and headed to South East Asia just under a year ago, it was all part of a strategic move to build something global.
Speaking to me via a WhatsApp call from a park bench as the sun sets in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, he laughs that Manchester is just as “glamorous” beneath the surface. And it won’t be too long before he’s back in the city to continue building his new business closer to home.
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That move came after the intense period of selling his first company, The Ambassador Platform, to global agency group IDP Education in a multi-million-pound deal in 2023, giving him a well-earned (if not brief) chance to pause and reflect.
But it didn’t last long. After spending time talking to international schools, the familiar itch to build something new crept back in. Again and again, he heard the same problem surface: parents found it “really hard” to find the right school for their children when work took them overseas.
“It’s really overwhelming for parents at a time when you’re moving to the other side of the world,” he tells Prolific North.
“It’s just a hassle you don’t need and you need to make sure your kids are safe, settled, happy and well. The right school is part of that.”
At the same time, he found schools were struggling with discovery too.
“After talking to lots of schools, they also found it hard to get in front of the right families, particularly with expats.”
Not long after, Higgins launched doris, a generative AI-powered platform designed to solve both sides of the problem and help “the right families find the right schools” across the $60bn international schools market.
But rather than initially building from the UK, Higgins chose to base himself in South East Asia.
“I upped sticks around 10 months ago. It could have been the Middle East but I had contacts and connections here,” he explains. “I thought this was the place to be, there are lots of international schools.”
How doris works
Powered by generative AI and proprietary technology, doris allows parents to search for schools either manually using detailed criteria or by engaging directly with an AI assistant, also called doris, which asks a series of targeted questions before delivering curated recommendations.
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For schools, marketing and admissions teams gain access to bespoke dashboards offering real-time insight into how prospective families are interacting with their profiles.
The company’s development team is now working towards listing 10,000 school profiles across multiple countries by the end of March 2026, as part of a territory-by-territory rollout.
Several leading international school brands have already joined the platform, including Dulwich College Singapore, German European School Singapore and more recently Stamford American School Hong Kong and Hangzhou International School, following the company’s expansion in East Asia.
So what makes doris different from other solutions out there? “The idea of listing schools online isn’t new. People have been doing it for 20 years,” he explains. “The big difference is that we put the needs of parents first, even before our own commercial goals.”
That approach is set out through a ‘Transparency Charter’, which lays out exactly how doris makes money, how data is used, and how schools are displayed.
“If you’re investing a lot of money in an international school, you want to know you’ve made the best possible decision,” he explains.
Crucially, schools cannot pay to be promoted on the platform either. And there’s a reason behind this.
“Existing sites felt dated and untrustworthy. Speaking to parents, they felt that whoever paid the most money got put at the top of existing sites, not whoever was the best fit for their child. We’re trying to flip that model.
“We’ve actively turned down revenue from schools wanting brand placements. We believe that doing the right thing and standing on the side of parents is what will win in the long run.”
‘It’s a place where you can run a serious, growing start-up. Ten years ago, that wouldn’t have been possible’
For Higgins, his Manchester roots are now coming back into focus. The company’s name, doris, is a nod to his grandmother, Doris Nolan, who grew up in a council house in Manchester and never had the chance to travel.
“It’s almost like bringing her with me through technology,” he laughs. “I’m not sure what she’d make of it, though.”
He also wanted to steer away from the stereotypical “blokey” tech brand. “Tech companies often seem quite masculine and that didn’t quite fit with what we’re trying to do.”
Recently, the doris team closed a successful fundraising round for an undisclosed sum, attracting interest from both UK and international investors, including Manchester Angels.
It proves a bigger point, that you can be based “anywhere in the world” and still raise the investment you need to scale.
“We did it all virtually. Our investors are based around the world,” he says. “With Google Meet, Zoom and Teams, the world is really small now. You can be a Mancunian entrepreneur, doing anything, anywhere, and still have strong ties to the North.
“That’s like me, it just happens to be that I’m here in Malaysia on the other side of the world.”
But not for long. “Over the next 18 months, I absolutely intend to move the HQ of the company back to Manchester,” he says.
Looking back, he can’t help but notice just how different the city feels from the Manchester he left behind for university in 2008.
“People might disagree with me, but I don’t think it had the infrastructure 10 years ago,” he says. “Manchester was looking pretty sorry back then. It didn’t feel like somewhere you could build a serious start-up, let alone raise investment.”
“Now it does. From the coworking spaces, the investment networks, to the community of entrepreneurs, it’s my motivation to come back. It isn’t just a place where I can be closer to my family, I can now build my start-up there. It’s pretty amazing.”
As for what’s next, the recent seed round will fund doris’ next phase of growth, with a particular focus on expanding across the Middle East while continuing to deepen its footprint across South East Asia.
“And seriously, Manchester is one of the best places to do that from.”
While he admits it will be “very difficult” to give up 30-degree sunshine and the expat life he’s built in Malaysia, he puts it simply: “Home is home. It can be drizzling rain in Manchester, but that’s part of the charm.”
