Insider Brief
- India has released a national roadmap to become a top-three global quantum power by 2035, outlining plans to scale domestic hardware, dominate quantum software markets, and deploy the technology across strategic and civilian sectors.
- The report sets targets including at least 10 globally competitive quantum startups generating over $100 million each, the capture of more than half the global quantum software and services market, and early deployments in defence, energy, logistics, aviation, finance, and healthcare.
- The roadmap warns that India faces supply-chain gaps, talent shortages, and IP weaknesses, and argues that accelerated investment, standards leadership, and two-phase national programs will be required to secure global competitiveness in the next decade.
- Photo by Riki32 on Pixabay
India has released its national roadmap to become one of the world’s top three quantum economies by 2035, outlining a sweeping plan to build domestic hardware capabilities, dominate global quantum software markets and deploy the technology across defence, energy, finance, and healthcare.
The report, developed by NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub with IBM as a knowledge partner, presents one of the country’s most detailed policy frameworks for a frontier technology to date, framing quantum as both an economic opportunity and a national-security imperative.
“For India, the stakes could not be higher,” V. K Saraswat, member, NITI Aayog, writes in the document’s forward. “Our aspiration to become a developed nation by 2047 will depend critically on our ability to harness deep technologies that multiply productivity, secure our sovereignty, and open new horizons of opportunity for our citizens. Quantum is one such transformative force. It holds the potential to revolutionize healthcare through precision medicine, redefine logistics and energy optimization, accelerate breakthroughs in new materials, and ensure our defence and national security remain resilient in an uncertain geopolitical environment.”
The 60-plus page document — Transforming India Into a Leading Quantum-Powered Economy — calls quantum a “transformative force” that could shape global competitiveness in the same way semiconductors, digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence have over the past generation. It predicts that the next decade will determine which nations define the architecture of quantum computing, communication, sensing and materials — and warns that India risks becoming a passive consumer if it does not accelerate investment and industrial development now.
The roadmap is explicit about India’s goals. By 2035, the country expects to incubate at least 10 globally competitive quantum startups, each generating more than $100 million (USD) in cumulative revenue. It also sets a target for India to capture more than 50% of the global quantum software and services market, leveraging its existing strengths in software engineering, cloud services and algorithm development.
These milestones reflect a strategic choice: while hardware remains essential, India believes its most immediate path to leadership lies in software, middleware, and application-layer innovation, areas where it already plays a dominant global role in classical computing.
But the roadmap extends beyond software, calling for India to build competitive capabilities in photonic and superconducting components, cryogenic electronics, communications hardware and post-quantum cryptographic stacks. The planners envision Indian companies not only serving domestic markets but exporting software, devices and subsystems into global supply chains that today are led by the United States, China, Japan and Europe.
The timeline is compressed, with funding for national quantum hubs, testbeds and research facilities — part of the National Quantum Mission launched in 2023 with roughly $730 million through 2031 — expected to build core technical capacity within the next five years. By 2030, the report anticipates industry pilots, sector-wide demonstrations of “quantum advantage,” early deployments in defense and energy and the emergence of a commercial software ecosystem.
The years 2030–2035 mark a period the report describes as one of “global competitiveness and strategic leadership,” where India aims to anchor quantum unicorns, scale domestic manufacturing, and lead international standards-setting bodies.
The Quantum Race Enters a Geopolitical Era
The roadmap situates quantum within a global race marked by heavy state investment, export controls and competing industrial models. The U.S. approach, built around the National Quantum Initiative and industry alliances like the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, is described as a template for how standards bodies can accelerate commercial adoption and shape global norms.
Japan’s integrated academic-industrial ecosystem and its government-backed supply-chain programs offer another model, while Europe’s IMEC-style semiconductor programs are cited for their long-term, consortium-driven structures.
China’s role is framed primarily in terms of materials dominance. The report warns that global supply chains for key quantum materials — including superconducting films, specialty optical components, and advanced semiconductor substrates — run heavily through Chinese suppliers, leaving other nations exposed to geopolitical and logistics risks.
Against this backdrop, India positions itself as a “trusted quantum partner for the Global South,” offering secure, lower-cost, and interoperable solutions to emerging economies. It also sees an opportunity to help establish norms for quantum governance, data protection and ethical frameworks as other nations begin to define these systems.
The Stakes for India’s Economy and Security
According to the report, quantum technologies will have their earliest and most consequential impact in strategic sectors. Defense and intelligence applications include GPS-independent navigation for submarines, quantum-secure communication links and advanced modelling tools for aerospace and hydrodynamics. These capabilities, the planners say, will be vital to strengthening India’s technological sovereignty and operational readiness.
In the civilian economy, the roadmap points to quantum’s potential to reshape industries such as aviation, energy, logistics and finance. India’s fast-growing aviation system, projected to reach 300 million annual domestic passengers by 2030, is highlighted as a sector where quantum optimization could help manage disruptions, improve network planning, and reduce fuel costs. The report also identifies renewable-energy grid management as a use case requiring advanced forecasting and multi-variable optimization, areas where classical computing struggles under real-time constraints.
India’s logistics sector, supported by the PM GatiShakti program, is another target. With more than 400 multimodal infrastructure projects underway, the roadmap suggests quantum-enabled scheduling, route optimization and demand prediction could reduce transit times and lower national logistics costs, historically 13–18% of GDP. Banking, chemical engineering, pharmaceuticals, materials science and insurance are also expected to benefit from improved modelling, simulation, and pattern recognition.
On the healthcare side, the roadmap describes how quantum simulations could help identify drug candidates, accelerate the design of new molecules, and support precision diagnostics, even in rural settings. It presents a scenario in which a child in Rajasthan receives treatment for a rare genetic disorder using quantum-enhanced drug discovery tools integrated with India’s digital public-health infrastructure.
A Candid Assessment of India’s Weak Points
Despite its ambition and bolstered by India’s national strengths, the document offers an unusually direct assessment of India’s shortcomings in the global quantum landscape. It notes the country’s heavy import dependence for cryogenic components, superconducting materials, optical assemblies and advanced semiconductor substrates, all foundational to quantum hardware. It acknowledges that India lags in system integration, end-to-end hardware development and the building of foundational software stacks that interface directly with quantum devices.
The roadmap also points to gaps in basic science funding, which stands at roughly 0.65% of GDP, and highlights weaknesses in intellectual-property creation, where India is not among the top 10 countries for high-impact research or patent activity in quantum fields. Talent shortages in cryogenics, optics, microwave engineering and hands-on hardware development are cited as significant bottlenecks. Procurement processes, regulatory uncertainties, and risk-averse capital further complicate domestic innovation.
The report warns that without reforms to IP governance, startup policy, and export controls, Indian founders may choose to redomicile companies abroad, weakening the country’s long-term competitiveness. It also cites the risk that India will remain a “rule follower” in global standards if its industry, research institutions and government agencies do not engage more deeply with international working groups.
A Two-Phase Roadmap for the Next Decade
The roadmap divides India’s quantum push into two phases.
Phase 1 (2025–2030) focuses on building scale and market momentum. Key goals include expanding quantum hubs, funding at least 50 startups and research projects, launching more than 25 industry pilots and developing sector-specific sandboxes for telecom, manufacturing, logistics and energy. This phase also calls for national testbeds for post-quantum cryptography and early deployments of quantum-secure communication networks in government and defence.
Phase 2 (2030–2035) shifts toward global leadership. India plans to lead international standards bodies, anchor quantum unicorns domestically, secure dominance in at least three or four layers of the quantum supply chain, and deploy quantum-resilient systems across national security and critical infrastructure. Stronger export corridors, deeper partnerships with the Quad, EU, and ASEAN, and greater involvement in global benchmarking consortia are central to this phase.
For all its optimism, the document frames the decade ahead as a narrow window. Major economies are already spending tens of billions of dollars annually to establish quantum leadership, and early advantages in materials, supply chains, and hardware platforms will be difficult to dislodge. The report stresses that India’s ability to shape global standards, build trusted hardware and software, and export quantum systems will depend on acting quickly across research, manufacturing, capital formation, and workforce development.
