As the country celebrates ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav’ to mark 75 years of independence, India is all set to join the league of global leaders with homegrown and more advanced quantum communication technology to equip its armed forces with state-of-the-art defence. Under the umbrella of Innovation for Defense Excellence (iDEX) – Defense Innovation Organization (DIO), QNu Labs, a Bengaluru-based Deep Tech Start-up, has broken distance barriers by innovating advanced secure communication through Quantum Key Distribution systems ( QKD).
The project was curated by iDEX-DIO with the Indian Army. After the successful trials, the Indian Army has now started the process of procuring the QKD systems developed by QNu Labs by issuing a commercial request for proposal (RFP) and deploying it. Quantum technology has enormous potential for military use and a disruptive impact on modern warfare. The QKD system allows the creation of a quantum-secure secret pair of symmetric keys between two endpoints, separated by a certain distance (in this case over 150 km) in the terrestrial fiber optic infrastructure.
QKD helps create an unhackable quantum channel for generating unhackable encryption keys that are used to encrypt important data/voice/video across endpoints. Buoyed by the start-up’s success, Defense Minister Dr Ajay Kumar termed the development of indigenous QKD technology as a milestone in ‘Azadi Ka Amrit Kaal’ and a fitting success story of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’. He appreciated the efforts of iDEX start-ups working in the field of deep technologies as they equip the armed forces with innovative solutions for modern and futuristic warfare. The Defense Minister also appreciated the efforts of Ministry of Defense Production, Ministry of Defence, iDEX-DIO, Army Design Office and Directorate of Signals, Indian Army, which contributed to the development of cutting-edge quantum technology in the country for the first time.
He added that iDEX is revolutionizing defense innovation and helping to support the creation of new technology solutions at a fraction of the cost and time. QNu Labs Co-Founder and CEO Shri Sunil Gupta said that the vision to put India at the forefront of deep data security technology with Quantum technology has finally borne fruit. He added that winning iDEX’s Open Challenge-2 provided QNu Labs with a springboard to achieve this stellar achievement.
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