Reflecting its commitment to 'Atmanirbhar Bharat,' the Indian Army signed its eighth procurement contract through iDEX, focusing on fostering defence innovations. A key contract with QuNu Labs for Quantum Key Distribution aims to replace traditional encryption systems, enhancing security. Currently, 74 projects under iDEX involve collaborations with 77 start-ups.

In line with the commitment towards the 'Atmanirbhar Bharat' initiative, the Army on Monday signed the eighth procurement contract through the Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) platform. The aim of iDEX is to create an ecosystem to foster innovations and encourage technological development in defence and aerospace by engaging research and development institutes, academia, and industries and providing them funding and other support to carry out R&D which has good potential for future adoption by Indian defence and aerospace organisation.

Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 12, 2018, during the Defence Expo India, iDEX under the Defence Innovation Organisation has emerged as a front-runner in establishing the right kind of contact with startups and innovators and has gained substantial traction in the defence start-up community, the defence ministry said in a statement.

The contract for procurement of 'Generation of Quantum Secure Key (Quantum Key Distribution)' with QuNu Labs was signed in the presence of Lt Gen NC Raja Subramani, Vice Chief of the Army Staff, at the South Block here.

"QuNu Labs had proposed a 200 km single hop Quantum Key Distribution in Open Challenge 2.0 under iDEX. It will replace the algorithm-based encryption systems thus enabling greater security as also optimising manpower commitment," the statement said.

At present there are a total of 74 projects of the Indian Army under iDEX included as part of Acing Development of Innovation Tech with iDEX (ADITI), Defence India Start-up Challenge (DISC) and Open Challenge schemes which involve handholding of 77 start-ups for the development of latest state-of-the-art solutions for the Indian Army, it said

The Indian Army is already carrying out field exploitation of the four delivered equipment from various iDEX schemes.

Based on the results of the field exploitation further spiral development of the innovative technology will be progressed with start-ups, the statement said.

(With Inputs From Agencies)