It has been reported that The adoption of quantum technologies across industries can potentially add $280-$310 billion of value to the Indian economy by 2030, IT industry body Nasscom said in a report.
The uptake by enterprises is also expected to go up by 45%, and in India, sectors such as manufacturing, high-tech, banking, and defence will likely lead the charge of adopting quantum technologies for critical and large-scale use cases, according to the report released on Monday.
Quantum Ecosystem
India is growing at an accelerated pace with 10-15 government agencies, 20-30 service providers, 15-20 startups and 40-50 academic institutions active in this domain, said senior industry officials, the company said.
A number of government agencies, academic institutions as well as startups have built commercially viable quantum computing use cases, Achyuta Ghosh, research head, Nasscom told ET.
“We see companies like Tata Consultancy Services, HCL Technologies, Infosys, Tech Mahindra, Zensar, Mphasis, Coforge among others creating use cases for quantum technologies and proof of concept for clients,” Ghosh said.
There is likely to be acceptance from service providers also very soon, he added.
Of around 100 projects initiated in quantum in India, about 92% are government-sponsored.
During the 2020 budget, an outlay of ₹8,000 crore ($1 billion) was announced for the next five years to advance progress in quantum information and meteorology, quantum applications and materials, and quantum communications, the company said.
“Today, we have less than 200 people in this industry across startups, academia and government but there is a massive need to scale it up to 25,000 as envisioned by the government in order to tap the $310 billion opportunity it offers over the next decade,” Ghosh said.
Quantum Technology
The actual growth will, however, come from enterprise adoption, said Akshay Khanna, managing partner, Avasant, a technology advisory firm that partnered with Nasscom on the report.
“The growth of cloud hyperscalers is also making quantum technology more accessible on the cloud. In India, enterprise adoption of quantum computing technology stands at around 1-2%. We see this going up to 35-45% over a decade,” Khanna said.
Hyperscalers provide cloud, networking, and internet services at scale by offering organisations access to infrastructure via an infrastructure-as-a-service model. Examples of hyperscalers include Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Alibaba and Amazon, the company said.
With China making huge investments both in terms of quantum computing and software technology, it is increasingly important from a geopolitical perspective for countries to increase spending in this space, he added.
Khanna said since the government announced large-scale digitisation initiatives across different sectors, early adoption and use cases are likely in areas like defence, banking and financial services, health-tech, semiconductor technology and meteorology.
Domestic Hardware
While investments in domestic hardware for such technology will take longer to fructify, enterprise software solutions are expected to lead adoption in the domestic market led by both Indian IT companies as well as global big tech companies like IBM, Google, Microsoft among others over the next 1-2 years, said Chandrika Dutt, research leader, Avasant, the company said.
“Most of the service providers are likely to use quantum computing for cybersecurity and communications use cases as well,” Dutt said.
Quantum communication applies the laws of quantum physics to data protection. It uses particles called quantum bits or qubits—typically photons of light for transmitting data along optical cables—to represent multiple combinations of 1 and 0 simultaneously. If anyone tries to intercept such quantum data in transit, the qubits change their state making the technology particularly useful for transactional and financial data. (Economic Times)
