India 1000 Km Quantum Communication Network Is Now Live

TITLE: ALERT: India’s 1,000 km Quantum Communication Network Is Now Live - The Post-AI Security Era Begins CHANNEL: AIM Network DATE: 2026-06-02 ---TRANSCRIPT--- So the breach that will hurt you in 2030 may have already happened. The data is collected. The encrypt uh encryption is still holding but that’s only for now. Sensitive communications captured in 2026 could be decrypted in 2032. The breach becomes visible years later when the encryption collapses. This is harvest now. Decrypt later. It is not theoretical. Ladies and gentlemen, this is breaking. Widely used encryption was estimated to require 20 million quantum bits in 2019. By early 2026, some researchers suggest 100,000 may be sufficient. Sunil Gupta who is co-founded is the CEO of Qnu Labs in Bengaluru in 2016 when the world said India could not build quantum cryptography hardware. QNU labs is now actually recognized as a global established leader across 170 companies reviewed globally in quantum key distribution. Sunil is joining me today on front page and he is going to be speaking with me about what the journey looks like as far as the country goes. What is the impact that QUU is creating and more importantly how is this going to influence and have a serious amount of significance on our lives as a collective consciousness moving forward. Welcome to front page. How are you doing Sunil?

Thank you Sep. Thank you for having me on the front page. Very excited to talk to you. Wonderful. Actually uh I am still Sudhi. Sep is the person who used to be the producer of the show. Is actually still the producer of the show. I’m just joking but I’m Sudhi. Welcome to Welcome to Front Page. How are you doing? Very good. Very good Sudh. Pleasure to have you on the front page. Looking forward to the discussion. Wonderful. And of course now I want to really deep dive into this uh Sunil and try to understand what is truly happening. So I want to first start with the area which is a very core very very crucial area for all of us army and navy. The deployments are already underway. The 1,00 km network connects multiple cities through fiber optic links integrated with quantum secure nodes. Now that I’ve established that 1,000 km of quantum secured communication is a very different thing from a lab demonstration sunil. So the first thing I want to ask you is this. What does that scale actually unlock for all of us and what becomes possible now that was not possible before? Yeah, interesting question, right? So the so actually if you see thousand kilometer actually addresses two key points, right? One is that um the the the technology barrier that we are removing, right? Uh you know most of the control experiments in the world has happened in the labs, right? And the way people have shown a few hundred kilometers to to couple of thousand kilometers experiments, right? But I think it’s not about distance that much. It’s more about how a quantum communication infrastructure can coexist with the real world telecom infrastructure. I think that’s where the key challenges had been. Right. Right. And because the quantum world is a very different world and classical world is is different world and when we bring both the worlds together, how do they coexist in the real uh real life uh networks? That’s what the key is, right? It’s so fascinating that you just mentioned that Sunil may I please request you to elaborate a little bit on that in terms of the classic form of the infrastructure visav the quantum and the coexistence for our larger audience. So classical infrastructure is based on um classical physics basically what is is about networking but I think the the real aspect that we are talking about is the trust right so if you look at in the classical network the digital trust is based on uh an encryption which is uh which is built on computational complexity right which is a tough mathematics behind it which so far you know It is it was very difficult for classical machine even supercomputers to break the mathematics and and and uh and I say get the encryption keys out of it. Um [snorts] but uh but now the quantum computers that are coming in will actually have the power will have the power to break this public key and extract private keys right and that is where so this is a classical infrastructure right which is now over the years have become weaker the trust has become weaker right because of the evolution of quantum computers now when we talk about quantum world when we’re talking about uh quantum signals which are which are basically a single photon regime, right? We call them. And these photons are very delicate particles, right? Of course, we call it in the dual state, not particle really. And these single photons actually tend to um tend to get impacted, right, with the environmental uh when they come in contact with environment, right? uh things like attenuation uh temperature changes uh you know uh the impact impedance because of the classical traffic coexisting with the quantum signal they tend to get disturbed right and that is where that is a that is where making a quantum system work on the classical infrastructure is not very easy right you need you need a a very your technology needs to be highly mature you know and other aspects that you have to take care of that right so so I think that’s what the thousand kilometer network that you eventually demonstrated that a quantum infrastructure right which is based on a quantum physics can actually be brought out of the lab and it can be actually integrated with a classical infrastructure telecom network and it can coexist it can be scaled and it can be reliably work in that environment right it is not this demonstration was not just technology proof it is also a readiness and a deployment proof and it’s fascinating the fact that you know there was a particular target that was set as far as this thousand km is concerned Sunil and correct me if I’m wrong we are far ahead of the target I mean I believe the uh I think we are ahead by about 3 years odd am I right yes yes so 2,000 kilometer as for the national contamination in 8 years correct and so tell me this how do you how do you feel when Mr. Raj Chowri who’s the head of the mission since you just mentioned the mission when he made a statement about uh let’s say this was about a couple of months back if I remember correctly and I’m not I’m not quoting him I’m paraphrasing uh he ended up saying that you know what uh we are far behind we are not there yet and a quantum threat as far as India is concerned is something that we should be very very wary of and mindful of we don’t need to build a computer in-house somebody doing it outside is uh in a position to crack us open and it is going to be a situation where either we have the answer or we are extremely vulnerable. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. So um yeah I mean to be honest with you today I don’t know most of the people probably don’t realize that we are not living in the old world that we used to. Yes. We are now in actually already we are living in AI and quantum world right? Quantum machines are available. AI agents are available. Mythos is one that came out couple of months ago or probably a few weeks ago. Sure. Which created so much so much chaos, right? So, so basically if you see what is happening in the world today is one side AI is now collapsing the time uh the the scale and the sophistication of cyber attacks. M something that was possible for hackers to to generate an attack probably or call it a cyber kill chain probably a year or two to to to to make it happen not is possible in a few weeks or probably a few days right so this whole time has collapsed um so which means that readiness of enterprises now cannot be at the same uh rate at which we’ve been doing right largely enterprises have been reactive right largely world over in terms of cyber security now that that’s not possible right um other side the world is very very different world is today one side is the AI attacks sc the the extreme power the scale at the speed at which their attacks are happening at the other hand the cryptographic trust on which we have been dependent on the last four decades true right is now also very highly vulnerable right as you talked about in the beginning harvest now decrypt later the adversaries already harvesting the data. So which means basically that the world needs and it’s true for India it’s true for the whole everybody that our paradigm shift is to happen where instead of uh early detection and faster response the cyber security is based on that right can I find threat intelligence to find the uh vulnerability earlier and then respond to it as actually moving to proactive immunity right so instead of so now in the current AI world I can’t stop AI agent to attack my systems right I’m it is not possible absolutely but what I can what is possible with me is the consequences of it I can say that if so I can focus now on data resilience and I can focus on a a next order of trust cryptographic trust so that is where the quantum communication comes in that if we can implement quantum communication at the right time right speed we can actually build a robust data resilience and a next generation almost unhackable digital trust right which can actually save the sails. So I think that is where uh but good part is that national quantum mission that got set up three years ago with their help India has multi many startups now. Sure. And and today I can tell you one thing that while we may not be ahead in other areas in the quantum field but in quantum communication in terms of technology readiness in terms of operational readiness we are ahead of everybody else right before I move on to mythos right sorry were you were you completing your thought no no I I was just saying that to just to answer your question in the last part is yes it’s very serious stage Mhm. But the good part is that the threat has become much bigger in the last few weeks a few months. Sure. But at the same time, our readiness is also there which means that if if we and this new latest policy that national quantum mission just released a few weeks ago that already gives draws the timelines and so on. I think now it is only left for regulators and for government to really go and press the pedal right to implement it. So at least we are we are we are better off than other countries in terms of that our homegrown sovereign technology is a available tested tried ready right it’s just that we need to just go and implement it okay so Neil before I move on to mythos I mean I have a thought on mythos and I’d love to pick your brain on the same but before I do that I have to ask you this you mentioned right now that as far as the other fields of quantum is concerned we might still be well wanting in those areas is but as far as countering communication is concerned we’re doing fairly okay which I believe yes also the stats reflect that entire positivity according to you what would you be kind enough again to educate us all regarding the other fields and have we chosen uh communications as the first path to walk is that the right decision we took or is it that we had to work on certain other things but because of pressures we went with communications first And I just hope that this doesn’t come to bite us in terms of the other areas which we are not doing so well at when it comes to quantum. No no I I mean I just want to be sure we are doing pretty well in the other areas as well. Right. Okay. It is not that the only challenge is that what I’m saying is we started quantum communication ahead of time right that’s the reason we are we are ahead but we are we are fairly catching up in quantum computers computing now we have probably 64 cubit quantum computer available very soon quantum sensing I know that there are very beautiful products are being built under national quantum mission and I know about those in quantum materials we’re doing a phenomenal job so I I think that we doing good in all the areas It’s just that comparatively if you look at where the world is we are we might be a little behind in other areas but we are doing pretty well there. What are those areas is my question. Quantum computing, quantum sensing, quantum material. Those are three verticals. I would say quantum sensing, quantum communication, we are we are ahead followed by material and then the quantum computing. It’s just a function of time, right? because we started in 2018 19 in quantum computing while the world has been doing that from you know from the last two decades right it’s just that which is fine because I mean it also gives us a slight upside and an advantage also s let’s look at it course I mean a lot of the other countries which have probably made mistakes we can probably learn from that and and squeeze that so-called timeline do you agree with me when I say that yeah yeah yeah of course of course of course because we we know what has not worked for them correctly we can make better decisions and I Think one important point that I want to make that quantum cyber security is always has to be ahead of computers right computing makes sense because once quantum computing is available now what we’re saying is just think about that today at least we in India we don’t have a panic situation because we know that if Qday arrives right we have a technology so technology tested implemented oh yeah makes sense right already so the only thing what we’ll require is that how do we plan it out and make sure that all our critical infrastructure, financial systems are safe, right? So I think we did a did very well as a country in terms of focusing on cyber security because you also probably we we should must realize that India has probably the largest digital infrastructure in the world. UI we do we do 20 billion transactions per month. Social security 1.4 billion digital identities. Uh there’s no bigger digital infrastructure that exists in the world. True. So obviously when you have a digital largest digital infrastructure you need to be starting early right otherwise you will so I think that way India has done pretty well right and we feel very good that um that we as a new started uh in 2016 in fact when we started our whole idea was I think this not been talked about Sudi is that it was around 2016 when India India talked about during demonetization one of the aspect that was talked about was India will move from a cashbased economy to a digital econom True. Right. And for us that the question was if there is no digital economy, we’ve got digital trust. Right? So we went and said that is digital trust that we have is it is it proactive? Is it sovereign? Uh is it ready for future uh future requirements and when we found answers we saw that a lot of work needs to be done and that is where you saw opportunity for us to build a next generation I would say digital trust. Right. Fabulous. And yeah, so so I think for that I feel very very good, very positive that that India has taken and done the right right things in the right time. You know, also another thing I’d like to add to what you just mentioned Sunil is the way we have structured our entire framework when it comes to quantum. you know a lot of the other countries have not been very they still actually struggle with the fact that you know the engineering talent or for that matter the sheer talent the quantum talent is wanting in a lot of the other countries so what we’ve done is [clears throat] you know the enrollment of uh more than 50,000 students who are taking up the quantum physics I think we’ve kind of turned it on its head which I think is a good thing we’re going with the talent and the infrastructure is getting built alongside what do you have to say to that yeah absolutely so the the winners are going to be ones who are not only building technology but building the future workforce. Yes. Right. Yes. And and India would need a lot of lot of that workforce. So so and I think looking at that last year middle of last year we actually started a QU academy. Right. Well done. We launched it and the idea was to to build 50,000 to 100,000 quantum ready workforce in the next three years and we already working with several university. In fact, we announced two days ago, we announced our first uh implementation of quantum secure uh uh university in in Las Los Angeles, right? So, so we are not doing only in India, we’re doing even globally uh helping everybody benefit from Indian technology. That’s so so inspiring. That’s wonderful. And and actually you’ll be surprised that a lot of people may not know that this year there are actually three universities who started BTech and Mtech programs in quantum communication. Fabulous. What’s the response been like? Oh, very good. Very good. In fact, students are choosing over that course over the standard classical engineering courses which is so encouraging because I think probably the youth tends to understand that that’s where the future is which is a good thing. Yeah. Now I’ll come to mythos. Okay. You mentioned [clears throat] mythos earlier and since the fact that you are pioneers as far as creating that digital trust is concerned. Just one [clears throat] small little stat which I’m pretty sure you already aware of and grapple with. Mythos identified 10,000 vulnerabilities in a month. Okay. [clears throat] Now my question is usually people tend to probably ask you Sunil regarding the fact that you know what there is a threat factor and the attackers have more and the defenders don’t etc. I’m saying how about we disregard that entire conversation. We say Anthropic has done something wonderful. They have created something and now how about they leveraging it at a price for various people across the board. Not just keep it to glass swing. Let’s go across the board. Let’s try to make the world a safer place and they charge money for it. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. That must be done because world will benefit from it. Yeah. Right. But but the challenge is this right so that you have to look it in a bigger context. The what we are saying is while the enterprises will benefit from it but you mean we always know that hackers are smarter right in terms of weaponizing it right so they will weaponize the same license or capability just I’ll just paint a scenario I’m not sure hopefully I’m not giving a a hint to the hackers but we hope so [snorts] so hackers if I’m a hacker I get access to um to the anthropic mythos toolkit I would probably use that to get into the most critical uh uh you know systems and steal encryption keys. I don’t have to break encryption keys because at the end of the day people keep encryption keys stored somewhere in the systems right and at a lot of time they might not be even encrypted. So the so the question is and I’m giving my thought process right here. So if somebody weaponized that anthropic toolkit my and actually use that to steal keys right and let me tell you uh un untold secret right of of crypto world that the biggest vulnerabilities in not in the the complexity of the keys but in the management of the keys. True keys are keys are kept under the mat. What do we call it? They are not encrypted. They are not secured. They are not stored properly. You know they not indexed properly and a number of things that happen. So key management is the biggest vulnerability. So what B was saying is when we realized that the mythos could pro could potentially do that we huddled in Q Labs and our idea was that how do we help build a quantum safe key management system for enterprises so that the keys are kept in a vault so even somebody hacker equipped with a mythos tries to attack the encryption keys he will not be able to access that right so so so what I’m saying that you’re right, we should definitely everybody will benefit it but there is a side effect of that as well right [laughter] but no with the way you’re talking about key management would you not be in a way probably be interested in let’s say uh reaching out to an anthropic or for that matter various other people to say okay wait a minute maybe we’ve thought of a solution how would you like to go ahead and try it because I think that is something which I believe is the biggest vulnerability as far as they are concerned absolutely and Um in in the in the last decade or so, if you look at all the encryption key attacks that has happened on the encryption keys, right? People have exploited uh the the weak storage of keys, lack of randomness of the keys, hard-coded keys and so on, right? There are a lot of vulnerability not in the in the lack of complexity of the keys. There are a lot of key management. the way the keys are conceptualized, designed, stored, there there are a lot of vulnerabilities there, especially in the in the the crypto world, right, where Bitcoin networks and so on where the keys are blockchain networks where the keys are not stored very safely, right? So, yeah, there are a lot of lot of aspects of of trust that we need to understand and manage, right? Tell me Sunil very quickly I want you to uh respond to this. Is QNU Labs a pioneer as far as this particular key management is concerned or are there other players in the market and most importantly why is it that a lot of the companies are not looking at this very very seriously because what you just mentioned to me is well crucial I mean if the basic hygiene is not maintained you’re opening yourself up to I don’t know what all no you’re right Labs actually started building a quantum key management system in almost 5 years ago. Nice based on our experience. But since we were too early, we didn’t prioritize it the to the level we should have. And when we saw that this as emerging as one of the key threat or vulnerability, that is where we accelerated it. Today I think we have one of the most I would say mature key management system. Of course there are there are couple of other companies globally who offers a quantum key management system but but I think the key point Sudhi is that if you look at shinu the approach what we taken which is very different than any other company in the world has taken that we believe that like power if you need to manage power you need to generate power you need to distribute power and you need to manage power right to power solution similarly for the encryption solution what we’ve done is we have done a key generation key distribution, key management, right? Because if you leave any one of these three pieces open, then you are having that as a weak link. So in cyber security and especially in a in a in a trust, how do we say absolute trust? It can’t be partial trust, right? And that is where our approach and Indian approach to uh to quantum encryption and cryptography has been very holistic and been very thoughtful where we make sure that the generation of keys, distribution of keys, whether you need whether you distribute keys to the cloud, you distribute keys to the endpoints, you distribute keys to the SL to even to the drones or to the satellites, you should be able to deliver keys securely and then all these keys should you should be able to store manage in the vault and manage it so that nobody can hack those keys. So this this whole complete end to- end solution that makes us makes us different. I believe that is the key thing to do. Anyway, I of course need to move on now to ask you about this operating quantum [clears throat] networks across underwater and underground terrain signals. Uh so what does it actually take to run quantum communications in the real world? we were talking about this earlier and according to you what are the kind of challenges before we kind of got it right if you could just walk us through that. Yeah, sure. So, I think the there are few things, right? Number one is of course as I mentioned to you, you you’re taking this. So, basically the QKD, right? The quantum correct network that we built is actually an overlay network. So, we don’t do any rip and replace. The idea is the classical network is there. We bring our QD boxes, right, systems and we they coexist with a with a telecom infrastructure and as a layer on top of it. M now what happens in the classical world just for the audience that typically if I have to encrypt something I will ask for a key encryption key right if I’m a router I will take an encryption key and encrypt and then send the encrypted data on the wire to the other end where it gets decrypted right now uh in the in the quantum network what you do is that you don’t use a classical key the router would ask for a quantum key from the QD box which is colllocated with a with a router in the same rack right so so now what what is required first is that an interface needs to be there sure between the router classical router to a QD you have to build a standard right so so so you have to have a protocol for you to request is a request response protocol you request for a key and you get a response you get a key right and because it’s a QD key you know that is a safe key and that’s what you use to encrypt and decrypt the data. Sure. So this interface is very important that how you are able to interop right. So for that you require standards right there should be standard of course the standard exist you need to implement it correctly and you test it making sure that there’s no vulnerabilities there and so on. So that is one aspect of it. Now second aspect is when this router asks for a key from QD the QD two boxes of QD connected two 200 km apart. So when you do a thousand km network it’s not a pointtoint km is actually a 200 km pointto and connected in a daisy chain okay right because single photons do not carry enough energy to to to go beyond a 200 km basically it’s a 40 dB technically 40 dB loss that we call it an optical fiber that’s there’s a there’s a maximum you can do right so so what happens is that these 2002 boxes connected on a dark fiber right with 200 kilometers apart need to be synchronized right because they have to do error correction the synchronization has to be a very high order synchronization right so so your ability to have a a very high order clocks right so that you can time stamp them very well for and then use that for error correction so that technology needs to be there right and when you take this system to the real world you will have a lot of attenuation in the optical fiber you have disturbance you have disturbance in the network and so on. So sometimes these clocks become very jittery right. So you have to make sure that all these aspects are so you have to do a lot of calibration and adjustments uh in the field making sure the systems are calibrated and tuned to the right levels. Understood. Right. So, so tell me this. Now that this was established, Sunil, uh, as far as the consistency goes, how consistent would you say now that we’ve established 1,000 km and that is now not going to break? That’s what I presume. Uh, moving forward. Am I right in saying that? Yeah. Yeah. So, just to let you know this, this is not while we are saying demonstration, but these are production grade boxes. Hence these have undergone hours of environmental testing. It’s gone through EMIC testing. They have been certified by certified agency. So this is like top class production unit tamperproof. Nobody can actually tamperproof these boxes. So highest order of uh you know quality of these boxes we have used for the demonstration. It doesn’t mean that we use a lab system for the for the that’s why I wanted you to highlight that. That’s so is a is a battle ready military grade boxes that we have used for establishing 1000 km network. Yeah. So essentially it’s ensuring that we are catering when you talk about uh battle ready essentially uh correct me if I’m wrong Sunil we are catering and in a big way providing a huge support as far as our navy our Indian armed forces are concerned uh with the fact that they are in terrains where let’s say laying of fiber cables etc is one challenge the other is the fact that they could get hacked the third is the fact that uh there could enemy threats and hence communications are extremely sensitive in those areas. Now with with this being established am I right that we have in a big way secured our future? Absolutely. Absolutely. So what we have proven is that on the existing infrastructure of telecom infrastructure which is which is at some places very good some places not very good not designed for quantum but our ability to still operate a QD quantum network on the classical network and secure the optical fiber communication for strategic sectors for defense and so on which says that we are actually have probably very great coverage and a lot of use cases that we can implement right away. Right. Could you share something with us to to maybe for us to absorb the sheer impact that you have created with this? Yeah, absolutely. So for example, I’ll just tell you of course because this is a sensitive critical infrastructure. So um I can just tell you that um we have established networks where critical information from one node to another node right is can be is now available for for our certain entities which was which is unhackable right and some of these happens in the in the border areas right protecting our communication some of these happened in uh other critical uh backbone infrastructure backbone I think that’s what we are doing we have also done that for uh for some of the you know uh army colleges right where the where the officers get trained right over the confidential information how do we protect that information using quantum safe networks so so that we have been uh we have been doing so so there are a lot of very interesting use cases and we have used um and this technology has gone beyond QKD Mhm. to because we are the and I think I it is important for me to mention that India is one country who’s not chosen a QKD or PQC right one over another we have actually chosen a hybrid tech and hybrid when we say it is not classical in quantum here we say about physics based and the mathematics based together what it allows us to do that so is we are able to put our stack software stack on a on a FPGA and we can put that into drones or to satellites, right? Nice. So, and what it allows us to do very interesting thing that we have are actually building a very unique uh model of we call it quantum security dome right which is like a iron dome which which protects the country from from missiles. We are saying in the cyber world you need a quantum structure coverage or a quantum security dome which ensures that we protect our terrestal infrastructure which could be a which could optical fiber network, Wi-Fi network and so on and then drone networks and the satellite networks. So we can protect our technologies then go into all these systems and in the future what we say that the future networks are going to be network of networks right they’re not a single monolithic network it’s it’s a it’s a multiple networks working with each other and our ability to have this technology go into different places in different forms allows us to build this I would say absolute resilience across different networks fascinating The fact is do you feel that we are somewhere pioneers of this uh the hybrid model? Absolutely. Absolutely. And that’s the reason we are among the the probably the only two two companies in the world who has successfully demonstrated and deployed this technology today. Congratulations Sunil. I mean you make us all very very proud. Also the fact that I want to add a little more to that feather in your cap was this 2,000 kilometers that is exactly what the national quantum mission targets with in 8 years qnu labs has surpassed halfway in record time which I kind of mentioned in the passing earlier but I have a question on this is India genuinely ahead of its own quantum timeline and could India leapfrog in let’s say select quantum applications the way it did with UPI in payments So um so tech so answer is yes ahead um and you’re comparing us with whom sunil it’ll always give context are we looking at China are we looking at let’s say the United States what what what are we looking at I’m talking about the world outside of China because China is something that we don’t know what is true and what is not true right of course what we heard few things they are whatever if you believe what is being published they’re doing very good but I think I can tell you when we look at Europe we look at US and Israel and other countries the use cases that we are seeing because we’re interacting with those countries we are participating in some of the RFPs we looking a lot of there we know that that we have the better use cases the use cases they’re talking about is already been implemented by us so I can tell you that and that’s the reason I’m saying that the requirement of the technology that they have the use cases that they have and the and the complexity and the size of the scale of the deployments that they’re trying to do. We are already ahead of them. Kudos, right? The only challenge is that and and I I must uh must must say that here is that we if we continue to implement our technology and I think this is a challenge for us right I think the real success or the validation of our success would be how quickly India can deploy this technology in the enterprise segment right nice for banking sector for example right and we’re going to come to that but anyway So that is where the regulators become so important right SEBI gave out guideline almost a year ago RBI is planning to do that now so and my view is that if you are able to do that India is able to implement this technology in in u in the enterprise sector right especially banking and healthcare then I think I’m 100% sure that we will not be only implementing it in India we will actually be leading this for the world and in India might have an opportunity to do another quantum vaccine diplomacy for the world. Wow, that’s quite a claim. That’s quite what we did for COVID. We gave a vaccine because we had the vaccine indigenous vaccine and we could give it to the world. Oh, and if the if we are ahead and we are ahead and if we implement in some of the large use cases ourself and and take those use cases and and this proof points to other countries we have opportunity to give our technology to them as well. That’s fantastic to hear Sunil. But I mean you know this comes to my mind which is from a simple point like you know now we talking beyond defense we getting into banks enterprises etc. Defense is usually always the early adopter which has always been the case across the board when it ever whenever it comes to the aspect of technology and this has been historically true but in your head one is who comes next and what does quantum communication look like in Indian banking and financial services that’s one second aspect which popped in my head which I want to ask you is are the legacy systems built for uh adopting quantum isn’t at a big stumbling block that we will face. We have to obviously get into enterprise deployment. I agree with you. But do you feel that is a very big challenge and I mean it’ll require a re revamp all together. So actually if you see um quantum technology can actually make so legacy systems lot of legacy systems are out there and they have come out of maintaining sort of support right u and that’s the reason that becomes a vulnerability right for hackers to hack and so on but I think what encrypt quantum encryption does and quantum this communication does is secure communication we can actually bring all those legacy system legacy systems under the quantum umbrella and actually upgrade them directly so that they don’t have to remain outside of the of the thing. In fact, it helps legacy systems to become safe. Fascinating. What kind of a timeline do you see Sunil? For example, let’s say we just take it for the sake of the discussion. Let’s say you have to uh bring the legacy system of the largest bank in the country under the quantum. How would you do it? Um I mean I would say this typically all this migration is about three three to five years journey. Right. Right. uh and and uh and the way it works, the whole process works is that um and that brings another important point which never gets talked about is cryptography has been a we call it cryptographic dark matter right it has always been a hidden asset which was which was dormant underlying never been audited never been never been visible right true suddenly it’s like a bone marrow right and yeah of course I do all my medical tests I can blood work everything I can But that is bone marrow right there somewhere there and all safe and so on. Now what we are talking about to enterprise when you go to banks and saying hey something that you never cared about and it was always there but invisible now you have to find out what you have check whether that you have the it is compliant or not and then you have to change that. Obviously everybody is going to come and ask hey help me first assess where do I stand what do I have right and you know to be honest with you we’ve been grappling with this for the last couple of years and we initially said okay because we we don’t they’re not in the tool business so we started looking at the third party tools and so on but we figured out that most of these tools were forcefitted and they were not prepared for cryptography right they were doing other things and they were repurposed for this that is where we decided to build uh we call cryptographic bill of bill of material seabbomb our own tool right and I call this India’s tool which can actually now and because it is built by us knowing the cryptography background knowing the challenges that the enterprise have so we have built it very differently it helps our customer assess what they have discover true assess prioritize plan and migrate right so this whole cycle so that is where I think that is where we get an edge of what everybody else because we are too deeply closely involved with customers. We understand their pain points and we have and we are not looking out for the for the answers. We have the ability and the capability to find problems and find solutions ourselves. Right? So, so, so, so that is where uh that is where and and I think banks as the quantum migration policy also talks about it. We believe that most of the most of the key banks top 10 15 banks will actually do a discovery and uh probably in by 2027 all of them will complete and by they will take another two years by 2029 to migrate all their critical um pieces applications client facing internet facing applications and all those which are more vulnerable they will be able to migrate them to quantum safe thing and then they can do a phase two with other second priority items. Is it being done in phases sunil also because of the sheer cost of it? Because I’m presuming it’ll be quite expensive. No no no actually it’s not. Okay. Actually it’s not not actually if you look at it um the if they like example we gave earlier right if their keys get hacked the amount of pain they will go amount of challenges they will face is probably 100 times bigger than the cost to implement it right so so I think and and then cyber insurance will come in now right cyber insurance will start asking you pay more premium if you’re not implementing quantum safe encryption ah fair right So, so I think it’s a repurposing of your budget, right? We always say that that you were spending more on malware detection and and you know preventing those rather than on data resiliency, right? Makes sense. So, yeah. So, I think that is what each of these enterprises have to do have to have the new perspective and start repurposing some of their budgets. So, yeah, that’s the way we look at it. So, phase wise is not because of the cost. This is largely because of complicity and their ability to see nobody wants to disturb their business, right? It is true. So, so they want to identify their I would say high priority, medium priority and low priority in three phases and the highly critical high priority they probably want to do in the next couple of years and but this is clear that this is where it’s headed in terms of the direction and I agree with you. you feel that policy will then eventually kick in as you mentioned very clearly right now regarding the fact that you know they don’t really have an option where they’re saying that if you’re not uh let’s say implemented uh QKD then well you’re left behind and you probably need to pay more etc but it’ll be a policydriven decision policy and regulatory yes regulation driven for enterprises yes because right now what we’re talking about telecom and banking industry right enterprise And then of course power sector they all are regulatory highly regulated industries right okay fair enough so yeah okay now I have a quote which I would like to share with you I’m sure you’d remember this quote these are a bunch of youngsters from Bengaluru and look at what they have built this was said by minister Jitendra Singh at the India AI impact summit 2026 so from hardware to protocols how important is it that India have built this end to end domestically rather than importing the technology from the same countries it is trying to protect itself from yeah it’s very very I I would say I will I wear this quote in in in uh in gold if not in more see I’ll just give you a perspective u and that’s what my worry is as as well right you talk about it India may enterprises May by the pressure of regulation and this policy enterprises might go in two years full-fledged full full hog and implement quantum safe encryption but that will not solve the problem if they go and buy foreign technologies because absolutely all these Ciscos of the world all the companies who have been already serving our our banks and infrastructure they might come and upgrade their systems right at implementing this [snorts] but I think for India important is sovereignty right uh and it is very important that in the next two years three years when our enterprises implement this tech they use Indian tech right and I’ll also say that 50 years ago or earlier that the country used to own nuclear codes right the the the people who had countries where the nuclear code their powers and everybody rallied around them but in cyber world and current world that we’re talking about the future called the one who controls encryption keys and encryption and sovereign technology is going to be the key because trust is said trust is going to be the most critical factor and if we are trying if we use foreign equipment they can actually control our future right and that’s the reason we at Kunu works at a breathtaking pace and our idea is and that’s say accelerate world transition towards cont say future future because a race against time it is and also we know that if you’re not ready as a with sovereign technology if you’re not fully ready we don’t want to give a chance to our enterprise to say that hey we didn’t we wanted you to do internal Indian technology but we were not there right now that is the test for us as a country I agree because if we miss this opportunity I don’t know next window of opportunity for India to replace foreign technology with critical technology with a sovereign technology might come after 100 Yes, I agree [laughter] and you’re right because I mean let’s be honest in the past we have missed uh the train as far as technology is concerned and I think we cannot miss it as far as quantum is concerned and you know Andhra Pradesh is is is said it time and again you know minister Chandra Babu Naidu has said it then we have the Q city as far as Bengaluru is concerned so I believe yes as far as the government is concerned everyone seems to be quite you know alive to that fact that we cannot miss this train. Do you agree with that though? Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that is a and even the policy quantum safe migration policy of national quantum mission stresses on that fact that it’s not enough to implement quantum safe technology. It is is very vital, extremely vital to to to leverage uh and use sovereign technology right it right people might have because India has never used sovereign technologies in enterprises right we have very less example zo is probably only one that come to mind comes to mind it is very important enterprises to to show that trust right in Indian technology and and and implement it right otherwise we will we will not uh have control on our digital future. [laughter] Makes sense. So Sunil, I want to add to that because I mean you know what you’re just talking about is very crucial and I I’ll quantify it with a few numbers. The EU has mandated postquantum plans by the 31st of December 2026. Critical infrastructure secured by 2030. That just adds to what you were just talking about. Europe and America are treating this as a national security emergency. Yeah. Do you feel that we are as alive to it as that? We are aligned. But I’ll I’ll tell you my perspective on that is what we have seen in the past. I’m just that enterprises tend to take little time right to to come and if there and the window is fixed for us right we’re talking about next 5 years if enterprises start two years later right they will get into panic mode. So the night will come compliance or somebody else have done it. I’m leaving behind and when you get into panic mode you tend to do what is easiest easier to do right that is where we will have a challenge right so so it is very important that every sector where there’s a so so so the plan is like this right if the top five banks top three telos right top three critical infrastructure government entities they implement sovereign technology they become the role model they become the case studies and then is adopted by government and then that becomes a success story everybody will follow. So it’s very important for us to build this those build those uh success stories and government has to play a role there to enforce some of these them to say hey and and just to give you an idea we did that implementation for a blockchain company uh almost four years ago and in last year world economic forums report our case study got referenced there. Wonderful. So and that is where it happens right because right now world is looking forward to some of the success stories right real world success stories in quantum tech and we have we have the technology we have the opportunity we have the I would say the the groundwork ready right so I think we can actually lead it so just to answer your question is we’re India ahead I mean more relevant than that I would say that India has opportunity to lead it today in quantum communication space you know at least what you just mentioned right now. I have to very quickly ask you for this and I would like a very quick reaction from you which is this. You said it needs a very heavy strong backing by the government for this to get implemented and generally speaking we know how a country tends to function. If there is something which is championed something which is celebrated then suddenly the funding will start backing it up etc. You’ve just mentioned a fewa cases, use cases which have that stamp of authority. Do you feel the government is woken up to saying that okay listen I’m not giving anyone a choice you have to implement it. Has that happened? So uh I would say that everything else has happened. Government support in funding in startups uh building policies government has been very proactive. I think I have not seen any other country doing that to be honest with you. Right. Um our Indian national quantum policy is is very is being acknowledged across the world that India has taken the first uh what do you say you know step towards that but I think what is key is that we need to close that very quickly with a mandate right right now it is a guideline right have a mandate uh and that is where regulators come very important right right so and have a review board make sure that each of these as I told you five top banks Telos identify the group of those entities ensure that they have a quantum champions right even in fact I would go one step forward to say that if there’s the budget issue government should say that okay we will give you the money to implement Indian technology makes sense go ahead and do it build this 10 case studies because we don’t want to remove those obstacles because otherwise those obstacles will make these enterprises go and implement foreign devices right if you’re able to do that probably it will take us probably a few couple of hundred cres right for us to get it done which is not a big money and I think that is what is needed right now fair enough I’d like to kind of summarize this entire conversation because trust me it has been fabulous and thank you so much for all of your insight it’s it’s truly been uh quite inspirational I’ll be very honest especially when you repeated a few times that India is ahead and I like the fact uh this entire plan that you’ve uh suggested it has to be mandated no guidelines anymore but very quickly I remember the founder of cubit force was with me on front page and uh it was fabulous what they managed as far as you know setting up of uh that entire setup was concerned in just 3 months and he mentioned something again and again it he said it was like magic and he also did say something which it was about the fact that the entire quantum community in India was standing with each other you know supporting each other hence it was made possible you’ve done something as far as communication is concerned quantum computing is the other aspect then there are other facets as well as far as the entire quantum mission is concerned do you believe in what he mentioned was the right way of moving forward that we really need to kind of you know come together and say all right this is where we’re going absolutely I mean is a power of ecosystem is very important I think uh because at end of the day you can’t do it alone Right. You need players. There are companies like just to give an example while we’re building this network 1,000 and now in the future 2,000 km, we going to use some of this single photon detectors built by some other companies, startups in India, right? So that’s the way to to do. So yes, ecosystem is very important. Uh but um at the same time, I think we have to make sure that u we are supporting each other in uh celebrating each other’s successes. Yes. And and then then building the momentum that is needed, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Wonderful. So Neil, it’s been a true pleasure and I would request you that we can please uh have you come back again on front page because this is such a important discussion and with such an important voices yourself coming back on the show sharing how the progress is. Share are probably other things which are probably happening which will inspire us as a nation moving forward. Of course, you’ve achieved 1,000 km in less in record time and you had 8 years. You did it in three, I believe. And now I think we have another 1,000 to go. But given the fact that your confidence and the smile on your face right now, pretty sure you’re already ahead of a target. Yes. 2,000 kilo is going to happen in the next uh next probably 12 months, right? That’s what you’re shooting for. Wow. You’re on record now, Sunil. Yeah. Yeah. access. I was I was very careful on telling you over the timeline. Yeah, I think we very excited about it. Great time and thank you Sudi for having me on front page. Very exciting always talk to you. We all love your front page and thank you and I would love to come back and have Conte on our discussion. It’ll be truly an honor to have you back Sunil. Best of luck moving forward and QNU is well ladies and gentlemen the way forward and of course if you want to communicate well not with quantum but with your voice in the comments below please do let us know because these are such wonderful developments which are taking place and what what is so fabulous to hear is Sunil who’s such an important voice in the ecosystem mentioning time and again that India is leading at this given point in time. This ladies and gentlemen is front page by the IM network. Like, share, subscribe and always remember think AI. Think I am.