Noida, India | Date, 2026
Cognitute Consulting today announced a comprehensive expansion of its leadership and ownership structure, appointing new Co-Founders and elevating high-performing team members to senior leadership roles. Effective May 28, 2026, Cognitute enters its next phase with a leadership team defined not by tenure, but by ownership, performance, and vision.
The announcement follows the appointment of Mrinali Jain as CEO and Co-Founder, and reflects founder Ashok Deepan’s long-held conviction that Cognitute must be a place where dedication is recognized, capability is rewarded, and the next generation of builders is given the stage to lead.
The leadership appointments are as follows:
Achala Chauhan joins as Co-Founder, Director and Chief Business Officer. Chauhan steps into one of the most consequential mandates in the firm’s next chapter, owning Cognitute’s digital growth engine across geographies. Her remit spans the full arc of how Cognitute grows, from deepening existing client relationships to breaking new ground across APAC and the Middle East. As the firm scales its AI Consulting 4.0 model into new markets, Achala will be the force driving that expansion with strategic precision and commercial urgency.
Saloni joins as Co-Founder, Director and Chief Financial Officer. Her financial expertise will drive Cognitute’s financial strategy and governance architecture at a moment when the firm’s ambitions demand exactly the kind of structural rigor she brings to the table. Her mandate is clear: build the financial foundation that allows Cognitute to move fast through acquisitions and mergers, and create the fiscal systems that turn aggressive growth targets into sustainable, defensible outcomes.
Devika Jain is elevated to Assistant Vice President, Digital Growth. She will lead Cognitute’s digital business and growth verticals. Her elevation is a direct reflection of what consistent performance, deep ownership, and an unwavering commitment to results can unlock at Cognitute.
Pooja Roy is elevated to Assistant Vice President, Core Operations. Roy will lead all client-facing operational functions, ensuring that as Cognitute scales, its delivery standards remain the benchmark.
Embedded within this leadership expansion is a deliberate AI mandate. As Cognitute deepens its Consulting 4.0 framework across all service lines, the new leadership team will be responsible for ensuring artificial intelligence is not a feature of the firm’s work, but a foundation of it. From Agentic AI service lines in development to data-intelligence frameworks already embedded in client engagements, Cognitute’s next chapter is as much a technology story as it is a consulting one.
Ashok Deepan, Founder, Cognitute Consulting, said:
“Building a firm is one thing. Building the team that takes it further than you imagined is the real work. These leaders did not inherit their roles. They earned them through consistency, ownership, and a commitment to the Cognitute standard. I have never been more confident in the organization’s future than I am today.”
The road ahead, as Deepan has described it internally, is bigger, faster, and more ambitious than anything Cognitute has delivered before. The leadership team announced today is built precisely to meet that ambition.
About Cognitute Consulting
Cognitute Consulting is a global management consulting firm that partners with disruptive leaders across seed-stage startups to large corporates to tackle their most daunting challenges. Anchored on its proprietary Consulting 4.0 framework, the firm delivers outcome-driven engagement models that guarantee tangible business metrics. With studios spanning India, Singapore, Dubai, the UK, and the US, Cognitute accelerates growth, creates resiliency, and drives transformation through human-centric, data-intelligence frameworks.
Media Contact
Anjali Neema
