TDB Signs Rs 150 Crore Quantum Security Deal With QNu Labs

India's push into quantum-secure communication got a large funding commitment on 16 October 2026. The Technology Development Board (TDB), which works under the Department of Science and Technology (DST), signed an agreement with QNu Labs Private Limited of Bengaluru, Karnataka, for financial support of Rs 150 crore from the Research Development and Innovation (RDI) Fund.

The project in numbers

The money goes into an indigenous technology backbone for India's Quantum Secure and Sensing Networks (IQSN). The aim is to lift a bundle of technologies from Technology Readiness Levels 4 and 5 up to TRL-9, the stage at which a system is proven in actual operation, by paying for the development, integration and validation of a sovereign quantum-security and sensing stack.

The four pillars

The programme is organised around four connected pillars:

• Identity security: quantum-secure physical unclonable functions (PUFs) and quantum-safe trusted platform modules (TPMs) that tie a device's identity to its hardware, so a copied or compromised device can be caught.
• Location integrity: compact quantum magnetometers to detect electromagnetic tampering and to allow navigation where satellite positioning is denied or spoofed, with uses in defence and other mission-critical platforms.
• Network security: chip-based quantum key distribution (QKD), satellite-based QKD, quantum-secure communication modules and encryption systems for safe traffic over both terrestrial and long-distance links.
• Time integrity: indigenous atomic clock technology and tamper-resistant time synchronisation using QKD-authenticated distribution, which telecom networks, financial systems and defence all depend on.

Why it matters

As digital systems get more tightly connected, the authenticity of devices, the integrity of navigation, the reliability of time synchronisation and the confidentiality of messages all become security problems at once. Conventional cryptography can struggle against evolving cyber threats, and quantum methods offer a different route. Taken together, the four pillars are meant to form an integrated quantum trust framework.

What officials said

Shri Rajesh Kumar Pathak, Secretary, TDB, said quantum technologies are opening new ways to address hard problems in cybersecurity, communications, navigation and critical infrastructure, and that the RDI Fund exists to carry advanced technologies from research and engineering through to deployable systems. The founder of QNu Labs said the support would speed up the company's research roadmap and extend its quantum security work into chip-based and satellite-based QKD, quantum sensing and artificial intelligence, for use by India's defence, telecom, financial and critical infrastructure sectors.