New Delhi, June 9 The Army has signed a contract with Bangaluru-based start-up Astrome Tech Pvt Ltd for procurement of indigenously developed ‘Tactical LAN Radio’ for reliable and interception-free communication in difficult terrain under the Make In India initiative to promote self reliance in the defence sector.

The contract with Astrome Tech Pvt Ltd for procurement of indigenously developed Tactical LAN Radio was signed in presence of Lt Gen MV Suchindra Kumar, the Vice Chief of Army Staff here, the Ministry of Defence stated on Friday. This is the second procurement contract through Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) signed by Army.

“Tactical LAN Radio is a state of the art high bandwidth backhaul wireless radio equipment for provisioning of reliable and failsafe communication. The solution offers an enhanced range of communication and embedded frequency hopping mechanism to preclude chances of interception and long-range point-to-multipoint high-bandwidth communication,” the Ministry elaborated.

The radio system also incorporates the enhanced safety features and can operate continuously for 48 hours on a single set basis without any breakdown. ‘Giga Mesh’ – an innovative wireless product to solve internet woes of rural parts of the country was also developed by Astrome. The deep tech start-up recently got a pilot project from the Department of Telecommunications ( DOT ) and has deployed Multi-Link E-band radios, which Astrome claims is the world’s first such system for broadband internet connectivity, in rural Karnataka.

A total of 42 Army projects are part of Defence India Start-up Challenge (DISC), Open Challenges and iDEX PRIME scheme which involves handholding of 41 start-ups for development of latest state of the art solutions for challenges posed by the force.

‘Acceptance of Necessity’ accorded iDEX projects of the Army are also under finalisation and are likely to fructify into contracts shortly, said the MoD.

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