November 7, 2026 · GlobalStudyConsulting database

Dhaka, the Consultancy Capital: 150 Offices in One City

One in ten offices in this database sits in Dhaka. A look at how the capital of Bangladesh became the densest study abroad market on the map.

Dhaka holds 150 consultancy offices in this database, one in every ten listings worldwide. London, the second city, holds 68. The gap is not close, and it comes from a specific local structure: Bangladesh sends large numbers of students abroad every year, its agencies cluster in a handful of well known neighborhoods, and unlike many markets, Bangladeshi agencies tend to maintain real websites, which is the entry requirement for this database.

Inside Dhaka, the market has a geography of its own. Dhanmondi, Banani, Gulshan, Uttara, Mirpur and Motijheel recur again and again in the address fields, forming a corridor a student can physically walk in an afternoon, comparing offices door to door. Chattogram adds 34 more offices and Sylhet 32, making Bangladesh the most capital-heavy market in the database: 150 of its 251 offices sit in the capital city.

Bangladesh is also the most price-transparent market here. Fifty-three of its offices publish a fee statement on their own websites, and 32 are flagged for free counselling, typically explaining that universities pay the agency instead of the student. A student in Dhaka can therefore do something rare in this industry: compare published terms before the first meeting, not after signing.

The lesson travels. Where agencies compete on the same street, they publish more, promise more in writing, and differentiate on services like test preparation and loan assistance. Density is the student's friend, and Dhaka is the clearest proof in the data.

What density does to prices and promises

Competition on the same street disciplines an industry. In Dhaka's clusters, an agency cannot quietly charge a file opening fee that the office two doors down waives, which is one reason Bangladesh leads this database in published fee statements: 53 offices put their terms on their own websites, more than the other six countries combined outside Australia and the UK. Density also explains the free counselling cluster: 32 Bangladeshi offices state the model openly because their neighbors do.

There is a shadow side worth naming. When dozens of offices chase the same students toward the same destinations, advice can narrow toward what is easy to sell. Dhaka's destination lists lean heavily toward Australia, the UK, Canada and Malaysia-linked routes. A student set on Germany or Japan may need to search the full city list deliberately, using the destination filter on the Dhaka city page, rather than accepting the first office's map of the world.

Data: the GlobalStudyConsulting database of 1,506 consultancy offices in 384 cities, collected from consultancies' own websites and verified November 7, 2026. Try the Agency Fit Finder or browse consultancies by city.