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It was a day to recall and remember for iDEX initiative – the Innovations for Defence Excellence –  when on Monday the 15th of May 2023 it signed its 250th contract with private manufactures.

In a longish and detail release issued by the Ministry of Defence, the flagship programme iDEX under a specific chapter of promoting indigenous defence manufacturing talent led by Defence Space Agency  – the 100th SPRINT (Navy) contract was signed in the presence of Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane and other senior civil & military officials.

The private startup defence contractor will be making small satellites for military usage.

According to MoD, the private defence contractor InspeCity will be manufacturing  – what is known as ‘Micropropulsion system for cubesats’.

Cubesats are a class of smallsats, which are modular; low-cost; easy to manufacture, integrate, and launch; and form a critical component for launch-on-demand capabilities.

For imagery/Intelligence Surveillance & Reconnaissance/communication purposes, cubesats need to be precisely aligned, hence there is a requirement of a compact micropropulsion system for precise manoeuvring and orbit correction.

InspeCity is developing a gas-based system for this purpose.
This technology, once developed, can be integrated with other satellites, including the cubesat swarm being developed under Mission DefSpace.

100th SPRINT (Navy) contract

The 100th SPRINT (Navy) contract was exchanged between AS (DP) & CEO-DIO and Sushil Eknath Ghule , CEO, of Siliconia Technologies Pvt Ltd.

This company is the winner of the Challenge which envisaged the development of a prototype that is a lightweight ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuit) based communication system using software defined antenna for Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit and Geostationary satellite communication. The solution by Siliconia can provide multiple independent receiver/transmitter sources that are essential in phased-array radars, typically used in satellite tracking.

It may be recalled that under the ‘SPRINT’ initiative, a total of 75 Challenge statements for the Indian industry were unveiled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation (NIIO) seminar ‘Swavlamban’ on July 18, 2022.

About iDEX

Till date, iDEX has received more than 7,500 applications from individual innovators, MSMEs and start-ups under various categories of challenges like DISC, Prime and Open Challenge. iDEX has also been able to generate thousands of jobs and attract India’s talent back to the country.

The iDEX is working at a path-breaking pace to ensure that its agreements with the start-ups and innovators reach logical conclusions timely, eventually opening a myriad of options for the budding, soon to be unicorns and at the same time addressing the requirement of Services.

The iDEX framework was launched by the Prime Minister in 2018 with the objective to provide the platform of co-creation & co-development in the defence sector.

It aims to engage start-ups to contribute to the defence sector and develop defence and aerospace setup in the country. iDEX is being implemented by DIO, established under the Department of Defence Production, MoD.