Building a quantum shield

SUNIL GUPTA IS WORKING ON DEFENDING AGAINST A THREAT MOST PEOPLE DON’T YET UNDERSTAND

- ANEES HUSSAIN

"I WAS ALWAYS EXCITED about scientific discoveries and hero stories," Sunil Gupta reflects,recalling his childhood in Delhi where he devoured comic books—Mandrake, Spi-derman, Superman — all with special powers helping out common people.

Four decades later, as founder and CEO of QNu Labs, Gupta is building India’s quantum cryptography shield to defend against a threat most people don’t yet understand.

In today’s world, every password, WhatsApp text, bank transaction, military communication, Aadhaar record, are all protected by encrypted mathematical locks that would take current computers millions of years to break. Now imagine a computer that could break those same locks in minutes. That’s the quantum computing revolution. And it’s not science fiction anymore.

“Everyone talks about quantum computing as the weapon,’ Gupta explains. “We're building the defence.”