India's Quantum dreams: The impact of tech on economy could be significant

With the National Quantum Mission, India hopes to accelerate breakthroughs in medicine, logistics, and finance, solving complex problems faster than ever before

Last month, India embarked on an exciting new journey that could help it swiftly tackle the most complex problems that once took years to solve, whether they be tailoring medicines to individuals’ unique genetic makeup, conducting real-time analysis of financial markets, or ensuring secure communication.
 

Spearheading this change is the National Quantum Mission (NQM), which was approved by the Union Cabinet in April, with a total outlay of Rs 6,003 crore over the next six years. The investments will be directed towards research and development, and creating an innovative ecosystem in quantum technology within the country.
 

With this, India joins the league of six nations that includes the US, China, Finland, Austria, France and Canada, which are leading the research in this field.
 

This moment holds great significance for the country’s technological road map. Quantum computing, in simple terms, offers a much faster and easier solution to complex problems that even today’s supercomputers struggle to tackle.
 

While the mission is a long-term project, the quantum ecosystem in India is already driving innovation at an accelerated pace. Currently, numerous players are actively engaged in this field, including 10-15 government agencies, 20-30 service providers, 15-20 start-ups, and 40-50 academic institutions, according to Nasscom. Remarkably, about 92 per cent of the approximately 100 projects initiated in India as of February 2022 are government-sponsored.
 

The projects operate by deploying suitable use cases with remote access to quantum computers (QCs) through cloud platforms provided by companies like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Notably, IBM was the first company to make an actual quantum computer available on the cloud in 2016.
 

India makes the leap
 

IBM has been playing a pivotal role in India’s quantum computing journey. “It offers access to quantum computers to anybody in the world. A majority of around half a million users of Qiskit, an open source software development kit for quantum, come from India,” says L Venkata Subramaniam, lead, quantum, IBM Research India.
 

Since 2021, IBM has prioritised access to quantum computing to boost quantum programming skills in India, he adds. By installing Qiskit and some Application Programming Interfaces, anyone can start programming or use a visual composer to build applications through drag and drop functions. The free plan offers access to IBM’s 7-qubit and 5-qubit quantum processors.
 

BosonQ Psi, a quantum SaaS software venture, became the first start-up from India to join the IBM Quantum Network, which has over 210 Fortune 500 companies, universities, laboratories and start-ups in the Network, all collaborating towards shaping the future of quantum computing. 
 

Subramaniam says quantum technology can solve crucial problems in finance, chemistry, life sciences, and logistics. He affirms the transformation is not a thing for the future, but is already helping enterprises.
 

“Some large scale customers are using a hybrid of classical and quantum computers to effectively solve their business problems,” he says. “We may achieve quantum advantage (where quantum computers outperform classical supercomputers) within the next year or two, not too far into the future,” he adds.
 

This can solve many problems at the scale of India’s population, for instance, identifying fraudulent transactions from billions of digital transactions, he explains.
 

The impact of quantum technologies on India’s economy could be significant. Nasscom’s study suggests that widespread adoption of quantum technology across industries could contribute $280-310 billion to the Indian economy by 2030. The technology may reach critical maturity by 2026–2027, leading to an increase in enterprise adoption, it adds.

Diverse use cases
 

The practical applications of quantum computing are already being explored by companies like Tata Consultancy services (TCS). “We expect quantum computing to help provide better solutions to complex optimisation problems. Coming to pure science, we are exploring problems in chemistry and pharma related to protein folding and drug design,” says K Ananth Krishnan, executive vice-president, and chief technology officer, TCS. 
 

The establishment of the National Mission on Quantum Technology and Applications will further enhance India’s capabilities in quantum hardware, electronics, and software, which is an area that needs to be strengthened.
 

Over the next three years, India aims to develop 20-50 qubit computers and establish 2,000-km of multi-node quantum network wit­hin the country. The national mission also aims to set up thematic hubs in top academic and R&D institutes dedicated to quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and metrology and quantum materials and devices.
 

Shubhashis Sengupta, managing director, Accenture Labs, India, says the next-generation computing methods are starting to unlock new scientific possibilities in areas like computational chemistry for new materials and energy solutions to address climate change.
 

Accenture Labs globally has developed hundreds of use cases that demonstrate the potential of quantum computing to unlock groundbreaking advancements. “We have developed use cases for quantum computing in currency arbitrage, credit scoring and portfolio optimisation for a client in the financial services domain. We have also worked with a life sciences company to apply quantum computing to accelerate the process of drug discovery,” Sengupta says.
 

Quantum computing is still in its early stages globally, but India cannot afford to ignore its role in it.
 

Arvind, a theoretical physicist and vice chancellor of Punjab University, who is among the experts working on India’s quantum mission, explained why in a previous interaction with Business Standard: “If everyone else in the world is going to have quantum encryption, then India cannot afford to be without it. These are the things that nobody will sell to us; we will have to develop them indigenously. A quantum industry is going to develop all over the world. It is important to have a partnership with that industry.”