A.P. govt. and partners issue Amaravati Quantum Declaration
The six joint commitments in the declaration include living-lab infra, indigenous supply-chain acceleration, capacity building, investment catalyst and global collaboration
Among the commitments is the creation of Living-Lab Infrastructure and the establishment of India's largest open quantum testbed – QChipIN - within twelve months. This will integrate quantum computers, Quantum Key Distribution fibre links, and deployable sensor platforms to enable pilots across sectors like health-tech, BFSI, logistics, defence, and space.
Indigenous supply-chain acceleration
As part of the project, Amaravati Quantum Valley (AQV) will be anchoring domestic production of qubit platforms, cryo-electronics, photonic packages, quantum chips, quantum dots, quantum readout hardware like single photon detector, homodyne detector, and control systems, targeting annual exports of ₹5,000 crore by 2030.
Talent and capacity building
The AQV will be establishing India's first Integrated Quantum Skilling Ecosystem to offer integrated PhD fellowships, engineer upskilling, and technician certifications, and empowering at least 20 universities in the State and 100 across India to run undergraduate, postgraduate, and PhD programmes in Quantum Technology by January 1, 2027.
Startup and investment catalyst
The AQV will be spearheading the creation of a National Startup Forum with Venture Capital-backed milestone-based funding and creation of a dedicated ₹1,000 crore Quantum Fund and providing access to living-lab infrastructure to support at least 20 quantum hardware and security startups in 2026 and 100 by 2030.
Global collaboration and standards leadership
The AQV will be establishing a Global Quantum Collaboration Council to harmonise international standards, pursue joint R&D, and promote trusted supply networks inpartnership with the National Quantum Mission.
Governance and accountability
An Amaravati Quantum Valley Mission Board will be constituted for identifying use cases in different sectors, and publishing a transparent dashboard of key performance indicators.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Indian Express
On quantum technology, India has much to do. Global partnerships hold the key
Written by Arun Teja Polcumpally On February 19, Microsoft unveiled Majorana 1, a quantum chip built on a novel state of matter known as topological conductors. CEO Satya Nadella remarked that the development of a fully functional quantum computer is now a matter of years, not decades. Much like the post-AlphaGo AI boom of 2016, quantum technology is poised to reshape global markets, security regimes, and digital governance. For India, this fast-paced technological shift raises a strategic question: How should it position itself as a key global player in quantum technology? The global quantum market value is estimated to be $ 100 billion by 2040, while the global quantum communication market size is predicted to be approximately $ 13.12 billion by 2034, expanding at a CAGR of 28.25 per cent from 2025 to 2034. Already, Volkswagen uses D Wave quantum computers in Spain for traffic route optimisation, and China has built a 1000-km quantum encrypted communication channel using Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and post-quantum cryptography. Additionally, quantum technology is dependent on global supply chains of cryogenic systems, specialised lasers, and advanced quantum chip fabrication facilities, which are concentrated among a few countries like the US and China. This also shows the globally restrictive development of quantum technology. Countries that take the lead in developing quantum computers and encryption standards will gain a first-mover advantage, enabling them to shape global technology norms. These dynamics underscore India's urgent need to engage more proactively in the global quantum landscape. India launched the National Quantum Mission with a budget of $735 million in 2023, encouraging research and innovation in quantum computing, communication, sensing and materials. However, the scale of private sector investment in quantum technology reveals the nascent stage India is in. Private investment stands at US$30 million, significantly lagging behind the United States ($ 6940 million), Australia ($ 661 million), and South Korea ($ 95.5 million). India is also dependent on raw materials like indium and lacks dedicated fabrication units. A 2025 report by NITI Aayog noted that export restrictions are tightening around key components essential for quantum development. Simultaneously, the Quad Investors Network highlights India's shortage of skilled quantum engineers as a critical barrier to ecosystem growth. While India has 53 quantum-related startups (compared to China's 63), only 2.63 per cent of domestic quantum research receives industry funding, while 16.8 per cent remains entirely devoid of funding. This reflects deep structural gaps in talent, investment, and secure access to upstream supply chains. Current collaborative efforts are limited where the partnership between Infosys and QuintessenceLabs in quantum cybersecurity integrates the hybrid quantum encryption into the enterprise solutions of Infosys. While such partnerships are promising, they remain narrow in scope. What's needed is a structured, multilevel partnership, anchored in India's strategic interests. The Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor has advocated for a comprehensive ecosystem mapping, covering investments and supply chain dynamics, to identify collaboration opportunities and vulnerability points. While developing a requirement mapping, India should leverage the initiatives like the 'Quantum Entanglement Exchange', enabling Indian scholars to access advanced American quantum facilities, contributing diverse perspectives to research programmes. This exchange programme will also benefit the India-US TRUST (Transforming the Relationship Utilising Strategic Technology) initiative. Beyond bilateral cooperation, India should push for inclusion in industry-led international quantum standardisation bodies. As quantum communication and encryption systems proliferate, early engagement in setting interoperability norms will help India to quickly develop and deploy quantum technology applications. Startups must also be part of this multi-level collaboration. Cross-border startup ecosystems could address entrepreneurship gaps through structured collaboration. Initiatives like the India-United States Defence Acceleration Ecosystem (INDUS X) could be undertaken to encourage the quantum innovation ecosystem. Such initiatives could also be trilateral between the US, India and South Korea, as a part of their trilateral technology dialogue. It would be beneficial if the premier incubation centres like the Telangana Hub (T-Hub) in India, the Seoul Startup Hub in South Korea, and the Convergence Accelerator in the US, come together offering joint funding and incubation programs to quantum startups. Overall, two contrasting approaches dominate quantum development. The first is the China model where its National Natural Science Foundation coordinates research across all quantum domains, outpacing the US's National Science Foundation by 2:1 in published studies. The other approach is that of the US, fostering entrepreneurial innovation through 300 quantum startups — nearly five times China's 63. India occupies a middle position with 53 quantum startups and $735 million allocated through the National Quantum Mission. This approach requires a push from the government and the industry. Since quantum technology development is still in the pre-market competition phase, India should actively engage with like-minded countries to secure its position within technology anchored geopolitics. The writer is JSW Science and Technology Fellow, Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), Delhi
The Hindu
3 days ago
- The Hindu
How India can overcome the quantum lag behind U.S., China
As India embarks on its ambitious $750 million National Quantum Mission, it finds itself at a historic inflection point—much like the 1970s when it declared self-reliance in nuclear technology. Then, as now, the engine driving this leap is theoretical brilliance paired with mission execution. Today's mission, however, seeks mastery over a frontier even stranger than the atomic nucleus: the quantum realm. Useful parallel The universe, at its most fundamental level, operates under principles that defy classical intuition. A groundbreaking experiment conducted at Israel's Weizmann Institute of Science in 1998, and reported in the prestigious journal Nature, vividly demonstrated one of quantum theory's most mind-bending assumptions: the act of observation influences reality. Researchers created a microscopic setup with a barrier containing two holes and directed electrons towards it. By employing an electronic detector as the observer, they meticulously tracked the electrons' behaviour. The experiment revealed that, when unobserved, electrons behaved as waves, simultaneously traversing both openings. However, upon observation by the detector, these same electrons were compelled to act as particles, passing through only one opening. Crucially, the degree of observation directly correlated with the extent of control over the resulting interference patterns validating fundamental aspects of quantum mechanics such as superposition, entanglement, and wavefunction collapse. These observations, amongst Richard Feynman's foundational work in the 1980s, would lay the foundation for Quantum Key Distribution computing, sensing and metrology, materials and devices, software and algorithms, optics, and photonics technologies. Around the same decade, India announced its self-reliance in nuclear technology that represented the culmination of decades of mathematical modelling, from Monte Carlo simulations for neutron transport to sophisticated algorithms for implosion dynamics. Starting in 1940s, under the leadership of Homi Bhabha, a theoretical physicist himself, the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research-led mission successfully built capacity in neutron physics, reactor design calculations, and complex mathematical modelling. This helped physicists build Apsara, India's first research reactor, and later the entire nuclear power program possible. Both nuclear and quantum technology deal with the fundamental nature of matter at the atomic and subatomic levels and are built on the bedrock of Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. Quantum physics is the foundational framework describing matter and energy at the atomic and subatomic scales, encompassing all fundamental forces and particles like electrons and quarks. Nuclear physics, a specific branch within this framework, focuses intensely on the atomic nucleus—its protons and neutrons—and the powerful strong and weak nuclear forces that govern them, operating at much higher energy scales than typical atomic interactions. While quantum physics provides the universal rules for the microscopic world, nuclear physics applies these rules to unravel the complex behaviour and transformations within the nucleus itself, leading to phenomena like radioactivity, fission, and fusion. Quantum mechanics and nuclear physics depend greatly on mathematical structures such as linear algebra, differential equations and probability theory to model and predict the behaviour of subatomic particles, in which wave functions and probabilities are key concepts. This legacy of coupling theoretical brilliance with an almost obsessive focus on mission execution is profoundly relevant for India's quantum ambition today as it pursues its $750 million National Quantum Mission. Quantum computing demands exactly the skills India has cultivated: advanced linear algebra for quantum state manipulation, group theory for quantum symmetries, probability theory for quantum measurement, and number theory for quantum cryptography. The transition from nuclear to quantum represents an evolution in India's scientific journey. Where nuclear physics required mastery of differential equations and statistical mechanics, quantum computing demands tensor algebra and quantum field theory—domains where India's mathematical tradition provides natural advantages. The same institutions that powered nuclear success—TIFR, IITs, DRDO and BARC—now host quantum research centres and have built and tested India's first 6-qubit superconducting quantum processor, facilitating India's entry into the quantum hardware arena, a field dominated so far by only a few nations. Interestingly, all the major building blocks were conceived in India: the qubits were designed and made at TIFR's Mumbai facility, with a new ring-resonator design created by TIFR researchers. The control electronics and software stack were integrated by DRDO's Young Scientists Laboratory for Quantum Technologies (DYSL-QT) in Pune with assistance from TCS, showcasing a synergy among defence labs, academics, and industry. Companies like QPiAi and QNu Labs are actively developing quantum computing and quantum-safe communication while the government is pursuing secure satellite-based quantum key distribution and advanced metrology systems. The successful demonstration of free-space quantum secure communication over more than one kilometre by DRDO-Industry-Academia Centre of Excellence (DIA-CoE) at IIT Delhi further highlights India's progress in practical applications. Further , start-ups such as Nav Wireless are pioneering indigenous Free space optical communication (FSOC) technology that can support interference-free quantum communication in urban and low resource rural settings. Despite India's progress in software-centric, theoretical and algorithmic aspects of quantum computing, the country lags China and the U.S. China leads in quantum communications, lags in computing (where the United States excels), and matches the United States in sensing. China excels in market-ready tech, while the U.S. dominates other high-impact areas. These progresses have been made possible due to their success in attracting top talent, providing enabling infrastructure/labs and sufficient funding (China's $15 billion public quantum funding) The crucial talent gap While India has a very large number of quantum-educated graduates and ranks second globally in quantum-ready workforce with approximately 91,000 graduates as of 2021 (based on quantum-relevant fields such as biochemistry, electronics, chemical engineering, mathematics, and statistics published by McKinsey Quantum Technology Monitor-April 2024), the human resource involved in developing quantum technologies is abysmally small. This critical shortage means entire subfields of quantum technology remain unexplored or underdeveloped within India. Furthermore, a notable weakness is the limited industry funding for research, with only 2.6% of surveyed PhD and postdoctoral researchers in India reporting industry support as per Office of PSA's April 2025- India's International Technology Engagement Strategy for Quantum Science, Technology and Innovationreport. This indicates a disconnect between the available academic talent and its effective integration into industrial quantum development. Building enabling infrastructure and self-reliance Recognising these gaps, the National Quantum Mission aims to significantly boost India's capabilities. Plans include expanding local fabrication facilities and supporting deep-tech startups through new funding initiatives, such as a recently announced $1.2 billion fund for deep-tech ventures. The structure of the mission consists of thematic hubs (T-Hubs) at world-class institutions such as IISc Bengaluru and Amravati Quantum Valley (Quantum Computing), IIT Madras (for Quantum Communication), IIT Bombay (for Quantum Sensing and Metrology), and IIT Delhi (for Quantum Materials & Devices) for creating research and skill-building in different quantum verticals. Further, India should also invest in the development of a robust domestic supply chain and talent base fabrication, cryogenics, and photonics on lines of the microelectronics commons programme in the US. While the Amravati Quantum declaration is a good start, India needs an accelerated roll-out of the enabling infrastructure to play catch-up with developed economies that have been investing 10X on Quantum initiatives. Fixing India's quantum talent woes The fragmented nature of India's research landscape, with few institutions appearing in top global rankings, could further hinder its ability to attract and retain top-tier foreign talent and lose Indian early-career researchers who often move to the U.S. and Europe for high-impact research opportunities. To reverse this trend, India should attract Indian-origin researchers working in international locations to contribute to its mission by offering innovative Visas (Europe's 'Talent Visas'), competitive salaries, better funding, and an enabling research environment. While a concerted effort is being made to create a qualified quantum workforce through numerous academic programs and collaborative research efforts, such as new undergraduate programs launched by the Department of Science & Technology (DST) and AICTE and efforts from not-for-profit organizations such as QIndia, the nation should focus on integrating quantum curriculum into K-12 education itself much on the lines of USA's National Q-12 education partnership. India's intellectual heritage, which enabled India's remarkable nuclear achievements, can now propel the nation toward quantum supremacy provided India focuses on Quantum communication and Computing as core areas as they are the foundational technology layers for enabling other critical missions on Healthcare, Energy and Defence. Sustained investment in specialized training, fostering stronger industry-academia collaboration, attracting and retaining top-tier talent, and developing a resilient domestic supply chain are all vital components for India to achieve its vision of becoming a global leader in the quantum revolution. (The author is an Emerging Technology expert with experience in setting up DeepTech public private partnerships and policy advisory in areas of AI, IoT, Quantum,5G, Geospatial, Autonomous and Data Centre Technologies.)
New Indian Express
4 days ago
- New Indian Express
Andhra Pradesh ready to lead India into Quantum Age: CM Naidu
VIJAYAWADA: Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Monday unveiled an ambitious plan to transform Amaravati into India's first Quantum Valley, dubbing it the second chapter of his technological revolution. The announcement came at the Amaravati Quantum Valley National Workshop in Vijayawada, attended by global experts, industry leaders, and policymakers. The state government announced the establishment of the Quantum Valley Park in Capital city Amaravati, a pioneering initiative being developed in collaboration with IBM, TCS, and L&T. The Chief Minister also inaugurated a startup exhibition, showcasing innovations in quantum computing and allied technologies. Operational from January 1, 2026, the Amaravati Quantum Valley is envisioned as a complete ecosystem for real-time applications in governance, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, and pharma. Naidu also launched the 'Amaravati Quantum Declaration,' outlining India's strategy for advancing quantum and deep-tech technologies. Back in the 90s, we built Hi-Tech City in Hyderabad when my son Lokesh was in Class 7. Now, he's leading the next wave, Quantum,' Naidu said. 'We had to fight to deregulate telecom. Today, mobiles are more essential than food. Quantum is the next frontier, not just for adoption, but for leadership.' He said that technology and knowledge are the new tools of power. 'War is outdated. India must lead with collaboration and brainpower. Amaravati will be our launchpad for a global quantum footprint.' Naidu announced that the IBM 156-qubit Quantum System-2 will be installed in Amaravati in partnership with TCS, L&T, IITs, and Tokyo University.
