Cognitel: Leveraging Education and Consulting Services to the ICT Industry Date:   Monday , December 09, 2013 The Telecom Services Industry in India is dominated by the likes of Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and Reliance on the service provider side and by Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei and IBM on the Infrastructure side. The total value of the industry is pegged between $45-50 billion and employs between 2.5 to 3.0 million people. While the market is currently dealing with a regulatory environment that has been challenging in the last few years, the service providers and OEMs have constantly reinvented themselves to suggest that the industry is poised for stellar growth in the future. A group of highly recognized and respected professionals who held leadership positions in organizations like IBM and Nokia sensed the market conditions and founded Cognitel, a Telecom and IT services company with specialization in consulting, training and research . Cognitel was created with a vision to create a world class workforce for the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry across all levels in an organization. \"Our team of consultants and educators is drawn from the some of the best names in the industry such as IBM, Ericsson, Nokia and Accenture and continues to contribute thought-capital to the industry. Our clients depend on us to provide relevant and lasting solutions to real life problems in order to keep them at the forefront of offering high end technology services,\" says Kabra, Director and CEO of Cognitel. Building an Efficient Team Since inception, Cognitel\'s mission was to provide uncompromising quality of education which meant focus on three basic things; creating rich in-house developed content, inducting and developing consultants to deliver this content and building an infrastructure that can be used to provide real life experience to learners. To embark on this ambitious journey, Cognitel\'s challenge was to be able to attract capital and talent. India lacks availability of educators that have prior industry experience and who can bring that experience to educate others. So Kabra and his co-founder Jain built their team by recruiting people from the industry who had good field experience and coached them to become proficient trainers or consultants. The team worked relentlessly to create content in various domains such as technology planning, deployment, operations and management incorporating their domain knowledge and problem solving experience. Competent Services Cognitel\'s training services are committed to create high quality technical and managerial workforce for the ICT industry. \"We are preferred learning partners for companies across the globe to fulfill the training needs of their employees as well as their customers. Cognitel\'s Consulting Practice ranges from Strategy to Execution in the areas of Organizational design and development, Managed Services, Network Strategy, Operational Efficiencies, Market Growth, and Project Management. The consulting team comprises highly experienced individuals from the Telecom and IT Industries who have created a lasting impact on the industry with their individual contributions. Cognitel’s Research division provides \"applied\" research across technology and business domains to help the clients develop future strategies for their business. They deliver this service through a detailed analysis of relevant data and provide actionable insights to the clients. An Edge above Others Cognitel has built a team of experienced telecom professionals that bring deep domain expertise in creating and delivering high quality content in the technical as well as management space. Cognitel\'s technical trainings provide an enhanced learning experience by simulating real life communication network in a one of a kind \"Multi-Vendor Lab\" environment. Today, Kabra envisions replicating the success achieved in India with clients in other geographies such as Middle East and Africa. Cognitel has recently launched a unique \"e-Lab\" platform that provides hands on experience on equipment to learners remotely in a secured environment. \"This will provide access to our infrastructure and modular e-learning courses to learners in any part of the world in the comfort and convenience of their homes/offices thereby opening up a whole new segment of customers beyond corporates to millions of individual consumers across the globe,\" concludes Kabra.