India Commits To Quantum Computing Research With An Investment Of ₹8000 Crores

The Indian government has just made public its plan to research quantum computing. What it does is to invest a total of ₹8000 crores in this field in the next five years.

According to Nirmala Sitharaman, India’s finance minister, the investment is part of the National Mission of Quantum Technology and Application project to encourage development in this field.

India is the latest country to commit to quantum computing as several other nations have announced their own plans.

The European Commission poured in €1-billion in quantum computing research in 2016. Two years later, the U.S joined in with President Donald Trump investing $1.2 billion into the field. China has been allocating around $2 billion to research. Other nations that have taken interest in the field include Canada, Japan, and Germany.

India is relatively new to this field with just a handful of projects currently running. In 2019, DST (short for Department of Science & Technology) announced the Quantum-Enabled Science & Technology project with an investment of ₹80 crores in Hyderabad.

Private firms like Google and IBM are racing against the time to stay ahead of the game. What they aim at is quantum supremacy, a term to describe the phenomenon where a quantum computer can solve problems normal ones cannot. Microsoft and Amazon have already had cloud services just for quantum computing.

Last year, in an interview, Arvind Krishna, CEO of IBM, said there was not any private company in India working in this filed He also urged the country to speed up if it did not want to lose its technological edge.

India needs to pour its money into the right projects to harvest positive outcomes in quantum computing. It is also advisable to collaborate with tech giants like Google and IBM to take advantage of their expertise in the field.

>>> Amazon Announces Its Quantum Computing Platform As Its First Step Into The Quantum Computing World