Abstract: ESSO-Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (ESSO-INCOIS) has for a while been providing innovative services such as fishing zone advisories, ocean state forecast and tsunami early warning. Further in 2012, in order to build capacity in the field of ocean services and operational oceanography, the Ministry of Earth Sciences set-up an International Training Centre for Operational Oceanography (ITCOocean) at INCOIS. The benefits were also envisaged to reach the Indian Ocean rim countries and other developing nations. In 2015, ITCOocean was recognised as a Regional Training Centre (RTC) by the Ocean Teacher Global Academy (OTGA) of the International Oceanographic Data and Information Exchange (IODE). The centre has state-of-the-art infrastructure, academic curriculum, administrative units, international hostel facility and expert faculty from the field of oceanography. The initiative was appreciated by Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission which led to its recognition as Category 2 Center (C2C) in 2017 under the UNESCO. It is therefore now a pioneer institute in the field of operational oceanography, offering various certificate programmes ranging from days to weeks and will eventually look to provide diploma programme in the field of operational oceanography.