Academic counsellors or tutors are engaged as a link between learners and distance teaching institutions. They perform various roles such as facilitating learning of subject matter content, assessing assignments, providing motivation and encouragement, and supervising research/term papers/project work. Each of these roles requires specific competencies to enable them to perform satisfactorily. This paper identifies the roles performed by academic counsellors at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) and the competencies required for each role. It also provides a generic list of competencies required to perform as an academic counsellor. Based on self-rating of the competency of a group of academic counsellors, the paper recommends the training of academic counsellors and the development of distance teaching materials for use in competence-building.