NITI Aayog & IBM Unveil Roadmap to Make India a Top-3 Quantum Economy by 2047

NITI Aayog & IBM Chart Quantum Economy Goals for 2047: Lofty Ambition or Achievable Milestone?

On 8 December 2025, the NITI Aayog’s Frontier Tech Hub, in partnership with IBM, unveiled a national roadmap aiming to place India among the top three quantum economies by 2047. Central to this ambition is leveraging quantum computing, communication, sensing, and materials — promising breakthroughs that could redefine national security, healthcare, finance, and even global trade paradigms. By 2035 alone, quantum technologies are projected to unlock USD 1–2 trillion in new global economic value. India, through its National Quantum Mission (NQM) launched in 2023 with an initial timeline up to 2030-31, now seeks to escalate its ambitions far beyond its original research and development goals. But does the roadmap provide the foundation to deliver outcomes—or does it promise too much too soon?

A Departure from Incrementalism in Science Policy

Unlike previous Indian science missions, which often prioritized foundational capacity-building, the quantum roadmap sets unequivocal benchmarks for market dominance. Consider this: the roadmap envisions incubating 10 globally competitive quantum startups, each generating USD 100 million in revenue. Further, it aspires to capture over 50% of the value in the global quantum software and services market—an audacious target for a country where the quantum ecosystem still lacks scale. While earlier scientific ambitions such as India’s Mars Orbiter Mission were characterized by modest budgets and experimental goals, this roadmap demonstrates clear pre-eminence in strategic sectors like cryptography, advanced sensing, and computational supremacy.

There is another significant shift: where numerous prior missions operated within narrow silos, quantum technology’s inherently interdisciplinary character demands integrated efforts across physics, engineering, materials science, and software. This breaks traditional departmental compartmentalization long characteristic of scientific policymaking in India.

Institutional Architecture: Who is Pulling the Levers?

At the institutional level, the roadmap’s genesis lies with the NITI Frontier Tech Hub, designed to align frontier technologies with the ambition of Viksit Bharat. With over 100 experts across academia, industry, and government collaborating on sector-wise strategies, the hub’s approach appears comprehensive. The legislative backbone includes provisions under the National Quantum Mission (2023-31), which already allocated resources for seeding R&D ecosystems.

However, implementation raises questions about coordination and oversight. Is the Department of Science & Technology (DST), which oversees the NQM, equipped to achieve milestones in commercial deployment? Moreover, quantum technology’s relevance spans multiple ministries—from defence, housing secure quantum communication, to industries facilitating lab-to-market transitions. India’s experience with multi-stakeholder science missions has revealed cracks before—a salient reminder is the fractured coordination during India’s renewable energy capacity expansion when state-level agencies failed to align with the Centre’s goals.

Narrative vs Numbers: Reading Between the Lines

The headline ambition to dominate half of the quantum software and services market deserves scrutiny. India boasts undeniable advantages in software talent, but deploying quantum computing requires much more. The hardware value chain remains concentrated in countries like the US, China, and Japan. To date, India has no large-scale indigenously manufactured quantum computer prototypes, let alone production lines for quantum sensors or photonic chips.

Budgetary support also raises skepticism. The NQM allocated ₹6,003.65 crore over 2023-2031—a sum that, while ambitious at launch, pales in comparison to nations like China, which invested approximately USD 15 billion explicitly into quantum research and industrial applications. Even the US’s National Quantum Initiative earmarked USD 1.2 billion over just five years. Building capacity, especially in hardware-intensive domains, requires capital inflows far beyond what current allocations suggest.

Asking the Hard Questions

Three critical questions loom large over this roadmap:

• Workforce readiness: The roadmap aims to grow the quantum workforce tenfold within 2-3 years—a timeline that seems unrealistic given that India’s premier research institutes like IISc and IITs still produce limited graduates equipped for deep-tech roles.
• Startup domiciliation: Preventing Indian startups from relocating abroad—especially to hubs like Singapore or Silicon Valley—requires structural reforms in taxation, IP governance, and funding ecosystems. Yet, there is little detail on how this will concretely materialize.
• International standard-setting: The roadmap calls for Indian leadership in quantum standards, but how will India influence global mechanisms historically dominated by the US, EU, and China? The absence of a clear pathway risks such ambitions remaining rhetorical.

Finally, quantum’s strategic dimension amplifies stakes. Domination in quantum communication could safeguard India’s critical government and financial data from cyber threats—a sovereign imperative. Yet, dependence on foreign hardware undermines the roadmap’s envisaged "strategic autonomy."

What South Korea Got Right in Advanced Technology Scale-Ups

South Korea’s approach in scaling semiconductor and display technologies offers instructive lessons. In 2018, South Korea leveraged deep subsidies—over USD 100 billion committed over a decade—to attract FDI while retaining control over the intellectual property chain. Crucially, it combined export subsidies with rigorous workforce development programs that integrated industry-focused training into tertiary education.

The comparison is telling. In quantum technologies, India currently lacks significant private sector participation and scaled manufacturing where South Korea excelled. Without incentivizing private hardware research alongside software development, India risks replicating its pattern of software-only dominance seen in earlier tech waves.

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