India's Quantum Computing Ecosystem Needs a Boost

In this exclusive interview, Rahul Mahajan, CTO, Nagarro, discusses the current state of adoption, challenges faced by industries, and the potential benefits of quantum technologies. Mahajan also delves into Nagarro's initiatives and collaborations to foster the growth of quantum computing in India.

India's Quantum Future is Here

How aware are Indian industries about the potential of quantum computing? Are there active initiatives for adoption within your organization or sector?

Awareness of quantum computing is limited but rapidly evolving. The initial push from the Indian Government is encouraging and has led to work in the area of communications, and security. As a CTO of Nagarro, I started a strategic technology initiative for Quantum Computing, we started with building the foundation in phase one, which led to the formation of QLab (Quantum Lab), a dedicated practice to work and research on this topic.

We are in discussions with a few clients, helping them with quantum research and formulating new, quantum-based approaches.

Can you share any specific use cases where your organization or sector has explored or implemented quantum computing solutions? What results or benefits have you observed so far?

The work in the private sector and industrial space is encouraging, leading companies are researching and working on quantum-methods

 Just as an example Quantum Chemistry allows simulating molecular behaviour in chemical reactions. These simulations enable deeper research in material science, e.g. improving efficiency for clinical trials and formulating new products faster and more efficiently.

The work has applications in CPG, pharmaceuticals, paints/coating and in the wider manufacturing industry. Nagarro is also researching solutions in the financial industries, this includes use cases like improvements to portfolio optimization, faster ways of setting trade in the contract for difference spaces, leveraging algorithms like Quantum Monte Carlo simulations, QUBO etc. for enhanced accuracy in asset predictive performance.

What are the biggest challenges Indian industries face in adopting quantum computing?

Challenges are in three parts, talent, infrastructure and limited innovation culture. Quantum computing is altogether a unique way of computation, though the learning curve is high, and needs talent, which has a mix of scientific and technical skills.

In my experience, important for organizations to go right away on this Quantum track, catching up will get difficult over time.

In the last few years, the Quantum infrastructure has matured significantly and is evolving rapidly, today we have access to 1000+ Qubits. In parallel with the annealing class of optimization algorithms, the hardware is fairly reasonable and is already production-ready.

The innovation culture aspect is equally critical, a good attitude toward new technology, investing time, experimenting, accepting failures and a culture of continuous iteration is important for growing into disruptive tech. Industry budget allocation is a reflection of this, and my hope is this part will see a positive swing. Another indicator is the quality and volume of research paper industry is contributing to the larger Quantum community, for now, this is very low.

Which industries in India will benefit the most from quantum computing in the near future?

I see significant opportunities in CPG, Finance, Life sciences, Transportation, Retail, Communications and Security. India is majorly growing in manufacturing, health, finance & defence. All of these sectors have good use cases in the Quantum Computing domain.

My general advice to industries and clients has been to partner in short-term/mid-term with Nagarro like specialized digital services players and developing infrastructure, and establish foundational methods first. In the later phases, internalize the successful solutions and scale them across different lines of business. Avoid putting a big ROI value upfront and give some bootstrapping support, including encouraging research and experimentation culture, this is critical for enabling a successful new shift.

Is your organization partnering with academic institutions, startups, or global entities to scale quantum technologies?

The field of Quantum Computing is intense, partnership with service providers will help expedite the whole journey. In the mid-term to long-term internalizing within the technical engineering part of the org can be explored.

At Nagarro, our Quantum Lab approach is designed keeping this in mind, the enablement is done in three parts, identifying good use-case candidates, grooming Quantum methods, and nurturing infra and talent. This approach is proven and works. The process change, data and infrastructure are the other parts of the approach.

What improvements do you believe are needed in India’s policy framework to foster the growth of quantum computing?

India is at the cusp of a Quantum Leap and the path to Quantum Computing is closer than it seems. At the government level I feel the government is pushing it, the National Quantum mission is a good reflection of the larger vision. Rewarding expert-level education, patents, and top research papers are the gamification and crowdsourcing elements to be considered.

The Quantum Mission parts can be further sharpened, and clear short-term/mid-term goals around talent, public-private partnership, and funding research are some of the possible steps that will give a serious push to the community

When do you expect quantum computing to achieve mainstream adoption in India?

The next 3-5 years will surely see good growth with quantum-based solutions helping new materials research, better paints, new medicines, faster finance computational infrastructure, and a safer digital world. The adoption will lead to more qualified talent, improved hardware infrastructure, and reduced cost to operate the hardware.