June 23, 2026
Indian marketing has always thrived on speed and scale. Over the course of 2025, GenAI moved from novelty to necessity. And now we foresee agentic AI and quantum are set to gain momentum in 2026. Today, 51% of marketers plan to invest in agentic AI, a technology that will soon run parts of the workflow on its own across testing variants, optimizing journeys, and reallocating spend with human oversight. And just beyond that curve lies quantum computing, a technology that promises to make even today’s AI look slow.
Our global research with Coleman Parkes shows the shift is already underway. Among the most advanced teams or the ‘Adopters’, half have incorporated quantum into their innovation roadmaps, and one in three expects marketing applications within two years. Yet the knowledge gap is stark: while 49% of Adopters say they understand quantum well, only 16% of marketers overall do. That gap matters because readiness for quantum builds on the foundation of GenAI and agentic AI. If your data is fragmented or your decisioning siloed, quantum won’t fix it and instead could potentially amplify the chaos.
Why quantum matters for India
India’s marketing reality is unique: billion-scale audiences, multilingual markets, and festival surges that behave like live stress tests. In this environment, the ability to simulate thousands of possibilities and decide in real time is not a luxury, it’s survival. Quantum computing offers exactly that. Instead of processing data sequentially, it handles complex calculations in parallel, unlocking speed and precision that traditional systems can’t match.
The shift is supported by the government’s investment of $750 million towards the National Quantum Mission. This signals a clear intent to build capabilities across research, talent and real-world applications, including those that will directly impact how businesses operate.
Globally, marketers already see where this could change the game. In banking, 80% of leaders highlight advanced predictive analysis as the top potential benefit of quantum computing. In insurance, the priority shifts to real-time journey simulation, with 69% of leaders envisioning renewal and claims paths that adapt dynamically by branch, language, and channel. Life sciences teams lean toward hyper-personalization at scale, a capability 67% of respondents believe will transform patient engagement. Healthcare organizations, rightly cautious about privacy, value faster and more secure data processing, a benefit highlighted by 62% of leaders. Even the public sector sees promise in synthetic data generation and dynamic pricing, enabling citizen services to scale without exposing personal information.
From promise to practice
Quantum won’t replace today’s AI stacks; it will sit alongside them, accelerating the hardest problems. Think of media optimization during IPL season when demand curves shift by the minute, or dynamic pricing for quick commerce during monsoons and long weekends. These are combinatorial challenges where quantum can expand the search space dramatically and still return an answer in time to act.
But readiness is everything. The teams that will benefit from quantum later are the ones running agentic AI now with confidence thresholds, human approvals, and audit trails baked into daily work. They’ve invested in clean, connected data and built governance that marketers can understand. They’ve designed surge-ready playbooks for festive peaks and live events, predefining goals and guardrails, so systems adapt under pressure without burning out people. And they’ve aligned on outcomes that matter like conversion lift, waste reduction, time-to-decision, and satisfaction.
What progress looks like
A year from now, we should see cycle times shrink because insights, decisioning, and activation sit in one loop. Media waste falls as models steer spend to micro-clusters and pause low-yield channels quickly. Personalization becomes something customers feel, not just see, because relevance shows up without extra effort from teams. Most importantly, trust grows, because oversight and explainability are part of the flow.
Quantum’s promise is simple: it lets marketers consider more possibilities and choose better ones, faster. For Indian brands, that could mean smarter credit and insurance journeys, safer healthcare communications, retail offers that make sense to each family in each neighborhood, and citizen services that scale without losing empathy. The next wave is forming. If GenAI helped us write and summarize, and agentic AI helps us test and act, quantum will help us explore and decide at a scale that finally matches the diversity and speed of India.
By Kunal Aman,
Director - Marketing & Communications - India, Middle East, Turkey & Africa, SAS
