Siliconia Expands Defence R&D After Landmark Indian Navy SPRINT Technology Contract

Pune-based Siliconia Technologies Private Limited is expanding its defence and aerospace research capabilities after emerging as one of the early beneficiaries of the Indian Navy’s SPRINT innovation programme, with the company building new prototype-development capacity and extending its activities into India’s space ecosystem.

Siliconia recently highlighted three important milestones on its corporate platform: the establishment of an Artemon–Siliconia R&D and Prototype Manufacturing Unit in Pune, cooperation with IN-SPACe, and its earlier selection for the Indian Navy’s landmark 100th SPRINT contract. While the company website currently groups these developments under a September 2, 2026 update, the Ministry of Defence confirms that the SPRINT contract itself dates to May 15, 2023.

That contract remains important because of the technology Siliconia was selected to develop.

Under the Ministry of Defence’s Innovations for Defence Excellence, or iDEX, programme, Siliconia was chosen to develop a lightweight communication system based on an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit, or ASIC, combined with a software-defined antenna.

The proposed system was intended to support satellite communications across Low Earth Orbit, Medium Earth Orbit and Geostationary Orbit. According to the Ministry of Defence, Siliconia’s solution could provide multiple independent transmitter and receiver sources, a capability required in electronically steerable and phased-array systems used for applications including satellite tracking.

The contract was particularly significant because it became the 100th agreement concluded under the Indian Navy’s SPRINT initiative and formed part of the wider effort to draw Indian startups and smaller technology companies into the development of sophisticated naval systems.

SPRINT stands for Supporting Pole-Vaulting in R&D through iDEX, Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Organisation and Technology Development Acceleration Cell.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi unveiled the first 75 SPRINT challenges during the Indian Navy’s Swavlamban seminar in July 2022. Rather than asking companies simply to manufacture existing equipment, the programme gave industry specific technological problems that required new indigenous solutions.

The response was substantial. By September 2023, the Navy had received more than 1,100 proposals, selected 118 winners under SPRINT and SPRINT-PRIME, and concluded more than 100 development agreements with companies, startups and MSMEs. Technologies being pursued included autonomous systems, underwater drones, artificial intelligence, communications, firefighting systems and long-endurance unmanned aircraft.

By October 2024, the programme had expanded further, with the Ministry of Defence reporting that the Navy had received more than 2,000 proposals under SPRINT challenges. These had been converted into 155 challenges expected to lead to 171 contracts.

Siliconia’s contract therefore emerged during a period when the Navy was deliberately opening complex military technology development to smaller Indian companies.

The technological focus of Siliconia’s project is particularly relevant because modern military communications increasingly depend on electronically controlled antennas rather than traditional mechanically steered systems.

A software-defined antenna can electronically modify aspects of its behaviour through software and digital processing, while ASICs allow important signal-processing functions to be implemented in highly specialised semiconductor hardware.

Combining these technologies can potentially reduce size, weight and power consumption while supporting multiple communication channels. Such characteristics are valuable for satellites, unmanned platforms and other military systems where available space and electrical power are limited.

The Ministry of Defence specifically noted that Siliconia’s proposed architecture could generate multiple independent transmitter and receiver sources required for phased-array systems. In a phased-array antenna, numerous individual radiating elements operate together, allowing the direction of the radio beam to be changed electronically without physically rotating the entire antenna.

This capability has applications extending well beyond ordinary communications. Phased arrays are widely relevant to radar, satellite tracking, electronic warfare and high-capacity military communication systems.

Siliconia has subsequently begun strengthening the physical R&D infrastructure available for developing such technologies.

The company and Artemon Aerospace & Infra Private Limited have established an R&D and Prototype Manufacturing Unit in Pune, which was inaugurated in the presence of Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh K. Tripathi.

Siliconia describes the facility as bringing together advanced engineering, deep-technology development and next-generation system design for strategic applications. The company has said that its work with the Navy and iDEX helped support its progression towards establishing greater in-house research and prototyping capability.

The importance of a prototype facility should not be underestimated in the defence-startup ecosystem.

Developing a promising concept is only the first stage of producing military equipment. Companies must subsequently convert laboratory technology into rugged prototypes, integrate hardware and software, repeatedly test systems and modify them according to feedback from military users.

Having dedicated engineering and prototype-manufacturing capability can shorten this development cycle and reduce dependence on external vendors during sensitive projects.

The involvement of India’s Chief of Naval Staff in the facility’s inauguration also reflects the Navy’s broader effort to maintain direct engagement with private-sector innovators.

Siliconia said Admiral Tripathi emphasised the need for Indian industry to push technological boundaries and strengthen indigenous R&D. The company has linked the new facility directly to its objective of developing technologies for the Indian Armed Forces and other strategic applications.

Siliconia is simultaneously moving beyond purely naval technology.

The company now lists an MoU with the Indian National Space Promotion and Authorisation Centre, or IN-SPACe, as another element of its expansion into India’s space sector. Its public announcement describes the agreement as intended to strengthen cooperation within the country’s emerging private-space ecosystem. Detailed terms of the agreement have not yet been independently disclosed in the sources reviewed, so the precise scope of the partnership should not be overstated.

The defence and space dimensions of Siliconia’s activities are nevertheless closely connected.

Technologies involving compact electronics, satellite communications, software-defined antennas, RF systems and signal-processing hardware increasingly serve both military and civilian space applications.

India’s defence establishment has itself placed growing emphasis on this overlap. The government launched Mission DefSpace with 75 defence-space challenges designed specifically to involve the private sector in technologies spanning satellite systems, communications, launch capabilities and space-data applications.

Siliconia’s development therefore represents a wider transformation underway in India’s defence industrial base.

Historically, sophisticated electronics and communications programmes were concentrated largely within DRDO laboratories and major public-sector companies such as Bharat Electronics. The iDEX and SPRINT mechanisms are creating an additional development channel through which specialist private firms can work directly on military requirements.

The scale of iDEX has expanded rapidly. By February 2026, approximately 676 startups, MSMEs and individual innovators had joined the defence-innovation ecosystem. The Ministry of Defence reported that 548 contracts had been signed and 58 prototypes had received procurement clearance valued at around ₹3,853 crore. Forty-five procurement contracts worth approximately ₹2,326 crore had already been concluded.

That transition from grants and prototypes towards actual procurement is especially important. Defence innovation programmes provide lasting strategic value only when successful prototypes eventually become deployable equipment.

Taken together, these developments illustrate how SPRINT is gradually creating a network of Indian companies capable of working on specialised technologies that were once difficult for smaller private firms to enter.

For the Indian Navy, companies such as Siliconia demonstrate the broader purpose of SPRINT: creating an indigenous pipeline in which military requirements can generate technologies, those technologies can create specialist companies, and successful companies can eventually develop a sustainable domestic defence-industrial capability.

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Reference

Press Information Bureau — Ministry of Defence
iDEX-DIO signs 250th contract, first under Mission DefSpace & 100th SPRINT (Navy) contract in New Delhi
15 May 2023

The official release confirms that the 100th SPRINT Navy contract was awarded to Siliconia Technologies Pvt Ltd for development of a lightweight ASIC-based communication system using a software-defined antenna for LEO, MEO and GEO satellite communications.

Press Information Bureau — Ministry of Defence
2nd Edition of Indian Navy’s Naval Innovation and Indigenisation Seminar – Swavlamban 2023
18 September 2023

The release provides the official structure of the SPRINT programme and records 118 winners and more than 100 developmental agreements between iDEX and industry.

Siliconia Technologies Private Limited

The company’s current news page lists its Artemon–Siliconia R&D and Prototype facility, IN-SPACe MoU and 100th SPRINT milestone. The latter is an older May 2023 achievement rather than a new September 2026 contract.

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