Mr. Brijesh Kohli, Director Xebia Academy Global walked The Global Hues through their company’s journey.
Xebia is a pioneering IT consultancy that provides solutions and ways forward to its customers and helps businesses grow, with experts specialized in Data & AI, Cloud, DevOps, Business Agility, Security, Training & Learning, Software Development, etc. The company promotes digital transformation and learning. Xebia Academy is an interwoven training division, dealing with learning solutions in IT. Xebia Academy’s agenda is to provide support and spread knowledge. Through partnerships with Cloudera, Microsoft, AWS, Google, UiPath, Scaled Agile, Scrum. Org, Cloudera, Snowflake, Scaled Agile, and DASA. Xebia offers comprehensive training in Apache Hadoop, Spark, Leading SAFe.
“Churning out competent and skilled individuals is a passion for people at Xebia Academy,” explained Brijesh.
Transforming the outlook of education
Xebia has a solution-driven curriculum built with IT expertise and client reports. Students get an opportunity to display their skills on a greater level through the hackathons and ideathons. Xebia assists its students in securing internships that help them build their portfolios as well as their understanding, giving them command over the subject, aligning them with the needs of business according to the industry trends.
Scaling the start-up idea to execution
Xebia USP is targeting universities to work at the core, and enterprises, to work on upskilling. Xebia understands the need of an organization, redesigns its strategy, and provides technical knowledge to the employees. Today, with 18+ years of experience, 1000+ top consultants, and globally recognized gurus, Xebia is making a mark in the world of education. Xebia is the largest producer and consumer of Agile and Scrum, giving them an edge in the market. DevTheory, Agile NCR, CRUX, XebiCon, give the customers a stage to practice the learning fundamentals.
Differentiating Factors
“We are proud of our challenge-driven platform Instruqt that curbs the limitations of theoretical knowledge and is open to the possibilities of obtaining practical exposure online. Thus, we call it a ‘Learn-By-Doing’ platform,” said Brijesh. Xebia’s repository houses hundreds of written materials to aid the learners devised by accomplished trainers, which helps the faculties to give the references while in classrooms. Xebia also provides virtual labs and lab manuals. Regular conferences to bridge the gap and events to widen the horizon are conducted at Xebia Academy. Xebia’s initiative Xccelerated.io was launched to eliminate the shortage of highly skilled Data & AI professionals.
The Clientele
Xebia caters to customers across different domains such as Aviation, Banking and finance, e-commerce, retail and consumer, travel and hospitality, media and telecom, healthcare, and many more. “We are who we are because of the organizations and the people associated with us,” Brijesh stated. Not just services but the relations with customers distinguish Xebia in the market. “We ensure to build an efficient workforce to take our legacy forward and keep up with the industry,” explained Brijesh.
Ensuring the best workforce
Xebia provides the right exposure to the learners by letting them personally experience technologies through Instruqt. Xebia gives separate training to the counseling committee so that the students are guided in the right direction, building a chain of knowledge sharing the responsibility of bridging the gap between the industry and the academy via webinars, seminars, and workshops. “Often the teachers are limited by the education system and the curriculum,” said Brijesh. Faculty are provided with teaching material. Xebia believes that a faculty must have first-hand experience, and since they are closest to the children.
Impact of changes in education policy
In Brijesh’s opinion, the New Education Policy has opened doors for Online Education with a focus on remote teaching and learning pedagogy paving ways to digital transformation. Xebia provides digital technology solutions to real-life implications aided with robust virtual learning platforms and a rich digital repository. “We strive towards making the industry-academic collaboration more concrete,” stated Brijesh.
Impact of Covid-19
The world was already becoming digitally capable, pandemic merely sped up the process. Assessing the situation, Xebians have been talking about merging the classrooms and online learning. There has been hesitation from both ends. While the industry is reluctant in investing time in individuals, the academicians are not able to reach out to the right platforms. With the pandemic, there is a dire need to bridge this gap. Xebia Academia’s methodology of working from the base to the tip ensures that the faculty and students are learning according to the industry standards.
Company and team ethos
Xebia is a family of competent practitioners who possess a love for tech and respect for each other. They operate on three distinct principles – Authority, Focus, and Values. Each day, they strive to be the best and build an environment of innovation and creative knowledge sharing. Xebia believes in keeping the people and customers at the top.
Biggest challenge
The major challenges faced are disrupted course streaming, lack of trust in the online mode of education, and lack of Practical Approach. The Ed-Tech business relies on internet bandwidth and connectivity. The roadblock is being addressed by providing a digital repository that can be accessed without the Internet too. Another barrier is mistrust in online modes of education. A planned framework is required to take concepts from the textbook and map it to real life.
Views on success
“If we can create a well-equipped technologically powerful workforce, we would mark the success point,” said Brijesh. Xebia is bridging the gap between industry and academia and creating a digitally transformed workforce. Xebia envisions a world where learners work in a self-driven environment, solely finding mistakes and solutions.
Awards and Milestones
- Economic Times’s best training organization in the IT sector and Business Connect’s certificate of recognition and appreciation among 25 most trusted IT enterprises in India in 2020.
- Economic times most promising business leader of Asia to Mr. Anand Sahay in 2019.
- ISO 27001 Certification
- NASSCOM technology excellence award 2019.
- Xpirit wins Partner of the Year 2018 worldwide award from Microsoft in the ‘DevOps’ category.
- XebiaLabs named Leader in Gartner ‘Magic Quadrant for Application Release Automation’ (Report) in 2016-19.
- 2015: Featured in the IT Market clock for application development (Gartner Report).
- Top 10 CEOs & Key Strategic Advisor for 2014 by HITEC to Mr. Anand Sahay.
- 2011: XebiaLabs – “Cool Vendor” for Release Management by Gartner.
- Deloitte Fast 50 in 2009.
- FD Gazellen (Financieele Dagblad).
- 2008: Xebia Group – Skillcity
- Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards.
- 2007: PWC High Growth Awards van Port4Growth
Visions and Future Prospects
Every Xebian is true to the 4 principles of Xebia – People First, Sharing Knowledge, Customer Intimacy, Quality without Compromise. The company aims to bring digital transformation to every sector. Xebia has adapted the Agile way, they envision a world living the agile life. “Agile is more than just a methodology, it is a way of living and imparting the same in the industry to bring a positive change,” said Brijesh.
Words of Advice
- Skilled professionals are the need of the hour and upcoming start-ups should focus on it.
- Not every student is equipped with gadgets. There’s a dire need to bring IT to them.
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