Students in Bengaluru can now walk up to a working quantum computer and actually swap out its parts — something almost no university lab on Earth lets you do.

  • 25 qubits the new system can support in its first phase
  • 4 countries' companies forming the hardware consortium behind it
  • 100 quantum engineers the initiative aims to train by December 2026
  • 1,000+ qubits targeted for future industrial-grade systems

Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT Bengaluru) officially inaugurated the Manipal House of Quantum, or Q-HUB@MAHE, on October 13, 2026. It's one of the first facilities in India built specifically so students and researchers can test and swap individual quantum hardware components rather than just running software on a sealed black-box machine.

An open-architecture machine, not a black box

Most quantum computers are vendor-locked: a company builds the whole stack, and researchers can only interact with it through pre-set software layers. Q-HUB's centerpiece system, called VIDYAQAR, was deliberately designed to break that model.

Built by quantum-control company QuantrolOx, VIDYAQAR lets engineers test, replace and benchmark individual sub-assemblies — processors, parametric amplifiers, cryogenic cabling, control electronics — using custom Python workflows. The facility runs on a Bluefors dilution refrigerator chilled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero, a Qblox modular control cluster, and a 7-qubit ConScience superconducting processor to start, inside a platform rated for up to 25 qubits.

That modularity is the point: instead of importing a finished system from abroad, Indian researchers can now swap in home-grown components and test them against an internationally proven reference stack. A startup building a better amplifier or a sharper control chip no longer has to build an entire quantum computer to prove it works — it can plug directly into VIDYAQAR and benchmark against the rest of the stack.

The facility was inaugurated by Dr. Sridhar Vembu, chief scientist and co-founder of Zoho Corp, alongside Dr. Marcus Rommel, CTO of Swedish processor maker ConScience — a pairing that signals the hub is meant to serve both India's software-industry talent pool and its hardware-manufacturing ambitions at once.

A four-country consortium, built for India's quantum mission

The hub formalizes partnerships between QuantrolOx (Finland), cryogenics maker Bluefors (Finland), control-electronics firm Qblox (Netherlands), and processor maker ConScience (Sweden) — all operating under India's National Quantum Mission.

The facility represents "Phase 1 of a structured national roadmap that targets scaling to 150-qubit proof-of-concept platforms and ultimately industrial-grade systems exceeding 1,000 qubits," according to the project's technical documentation.

MAHE faculty and students completed hands-on training at QuantrolOx's own facilities at QuTech and the House of Quantum in Delft before the Bengaluru hub went live, and the consortium's stated goal is to train 100 quantum engineers through the hub by the end of 2026.

Why it matters beyond one lab

Quantum computing's biggest practical bottleneck right now isn't theory — it's a global shortage of engineers who know how to build, calibrate and maintain the cryogenic hardware underneath the qubits. A teaching lab where students can take a real system apart and put it back together addresses that shortage directly, rather than training people only on simulators.

The hub also builds on groundwork laid by an earlier QuantrolOx–MAHE partnership agreement, and it complements a separate five-year deal QuantrolOx signed with UC Berkeley to industrialize quantum-processor manufacturing — part of a wider push by the company to seed open quantum-hardware infrastructure well beyond its home base in Finland.

Details on the launch and its industry partners are available from Quantum Computing Report and The Quantum Insider.

If the roadmap holds, Bengaluru's 25-qubit starting point is meant to be a stepping stone — both for India's home-grown hardware ambitions and for the next generation of engineers who'll need to run it.