India has taken a major stride towards constructing a vital piece of foundational infrastructure required for advanced quantum applications, Bharat Shakti reported.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation has signed its very first high-value deep-tech agreement under the Technology Development Fund program for the indigenous development of an ultra-low temperature 20 millikelvin dilution refrigerator.

The landmark agreement was formally inked in New Delhi between the Director of the Technology Development Fund and Alwar, Rajasthan-based deep-tech start-up Zero mK India Private Limited. 

Founded by industry visionaries like Kapil Bansal, the start-up will lead the collaborative development to produce this complex 20 millikelvin-class cryogenic hardware domestically.

This pact marks the inaugural high-value deep-tech project taken up under the dedicated ₹500 crore corpus previously sanctioned by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh. The targeted financial pool was specifically approved to promote cutting-edge and emerging technologies through greater participation from private domestic industry and vibrant start-ups.

Although a dilution refrigerator does not function as a standalone quantum computer, it serves as an indispensable enabling platform for multiple quantum-computing architectures. These include systems built upon superconducting qubits, trapped ions, and quantum dots, which require operating environments cooled to a minuscule fraction of a degree above absolute zero.

Lowering the operational environment down to approximately 20 millikelvin allows researchers to maintain the extraordinarily fragile quantum states upon which quantum processors rely.

At such near-absolute-zero conditions, thermal noise and disturbances are drastically suppressed, creating the highly controlled environment needed for delicate quantum computations, coherence retention, and complex experiments.

For India, mastering this ultra-low temperature cryogenic capability within domestic borders yields long-term strategic advantages that extend far beyond quantum computing alone.

Developing advanced cryogenics involves high-precision engineering, specialised thermodynamic loops, custom electronics, and control architectures, where reliance on imported equipment presents significant supply-chain vulnerabilities for sensitive technologies.

Consequently, this Defence Research and Development Organisation initiative aims to achieve much more than manufacturing a single specialized refrigeration device. The initiative seeks to build a resilient domestic technology base in an essential domain that will become increasingly vital as India’s broader quantum technological ecosystem expands over the coming decade.

The program directly aligns with the objectives of the National Quantum Mission, bolstering India’s sovereign capabilities across quantum computing, quantum communications, quantum sensing, and advanced cryogenics.

Domestic production will cut reliance on expensive foreign cryogenic infrastructure while providing Indian academic researchers, deep-tech start-ups, and commercial developers ready access to critical machinery.

This agreement also signals a progressively widening mandate for the Technology Development Fund in nurturing deep-tech start-ups that work on dual-use capabilities with applications reaching well beyond traditional military platforms.

The 20 millikelvin dilution refrigerator effort will serve as an crucial early test of the collaborative Defence Research and Development Organisation-industry framework for building challenging deep-tech systems locally.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh congratulated the Defence Research and Development Organisation, Zero mK India Private Limited, and all participating stakeholders on reaching this milestone.

He expressed firm confidence that this public-private partnership would set a strong precedent for future defence-industry joint ventures across critical emerging technology domains.

Defence Secretary, Secretary of the Department of Defence R&D, and Defence Research and Development Organisation Chairman Rajesh Kumar Singh also extended his congratulations to the technical teams and wished them complete success in fulfilling the project's milestones.

The development process will be actively mentored and monitored by the Solid State Physics Laboratory based in Delhi. The Director of the Solid State Physics Laboratory and his specialist team are providing direct technical mentorship, joined by senior officials from the Micro Electronic Devices & Computational System, Cyber Security, and Technology Management divisions.

This strategic contract comes at a pivotal moment as India accelerates efforts to construct an end-to-end indigenous quantum tech landscape spanning computing, secure communications, and ultra-precise sensors.

Creating indigenous capability in the less visible but foundational hardware—such as 20 millikelvin cryogenics—could ultimately prove just as decisive to national technological sovereignty as developing the quantum processors themselves.

Agencies