A bill is paid. A medical report is opened. A document is shared. A few taps on a phone are all it takes to pay a bill, transfer money, access a health report, or share an important document. It all feels effortless. These moments take only seconds, and most of us never stop to wonder how this information remains private. 

We trust that the invisible systems protecting our data will continue to do their job. Still, behind this everyday convenience lies a growing concern that has kept scientists and cybersecurity experts awake for years. The encryption that protects today’s digital world may not always be enough. As quantum computers move from research laboratories towards reality, they could one day crack many of the security systems the world currently depends upon.

Nearly a decade ago, when this conversation was still confined to academic circles, Sunil Gupta and Srinivasa Rao Aluri were already asking themselves a genuine question. If India was racing towards becoming one of the world’s largest digital economies, who was preparing to secure that future?

That belief led them to establish ‘QNu Labs’ in 2016. The company was incubated at IIT Madras in Tamil Nadu before moving its headquarters to Bengaluru, Karnataka, where it continues to build technologies designed to protect India’s digital future. 

Around 10 years later, it has grown into what the founders describe as India’s only full-stack quantum cybersecurity company. This means it builds the hardware, software, and secure applications needed to protect communication systems across defence, banking, government, and critical infrastructure. 

Looking back, Sunil, the co-founder and CEO of the organisation, says the idea was never about predicting the future. It was about preparing for it.

“When we began, quantum computing wasn’t something people discussed outside research circles, but one question kept coming back to us. If India’s digital economy is growing this fast, shouldn’t we start preparing for the risks that could come with it?” he tells The Better India.

Preparing before the threat arrived

In 2016, quantum computers were still largely confined to laboratories. For many people, the technology sounded like something from science fiction rather than an immediate concern. Friends, investors, and industry experts frequently questioned why a young Indian startup wanted to spend years solving a problem that sounded so far away.

The founders heard those doubts routinely.

“People told us we were working on tomorrow’s problem,” recalls Srinivasa. “We looked at it differently. If you wait until tomorrow arrives, you have already lost valuable time. Security has to be built before the threat becomes real.”

It was a philosophy that drove everything the company did.

Most cybersecurity companies were focused on identifying attacks faster or responding more efficiently once systems had already been compromised. The duo wanted to approach the problem from a completely different direction. Instead of improving the alarm system, they wanted to redesign the lock itself.

“We believed security needed an urgent shift from ‘early detection and faster response’ to proactive immunity,” says Sunil. “For us, the goal was not only to react better. It was to make attacks substantially harder in the first place.”

That decision meant that for years, there would be no quick payoff. The founders had to sit with the uncertainty, keep building in labs, and explain the same idea to people who still saw it as too far away. 

But they believed that if the groundwork was done early, India would have a stronger chance of meeting the quantum era before it arrived at its doorstep. 

The science behind safe communication

For many people, the word quantum immediately sounds scary. It brings to mind complicated equations, research laboratories, and concepts that appear impossible to understand. Yet the challenge QNu Labs is addressing can be explained through something surprisingly familiar.

Imagine sending a valuable document inside a locked box. Both the sender and the receiver have identical keys, and only those keys can open the lock. As long as no one else gains access to the key, the document remains secure.

That is basically how digital encryption works today. Every online payment, confidential email, or government record depends on secret digital keys that scramble information into unreadable code before it is transmitted across a network.

Today’s encryption depends on problems that normal computers find extremely hard to solve. Quantum computers could solve some of them much faster, which means the........

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