3 Live Challenges, $160 in Real Prizes, Zero Submissions So Far

As of today, BrainSumo has three live challenges open for submissions. All three are funded, all three have real prize money attached, and all three currently have zero submissions. We're not hiding that number — we're leading with it, because it's the most useful piece of information in this post if you're deciding whether it's worth an hour of your time.

The three challenges, as they stand right now

• Pitch a Growth Idea for an Indian D2C Snack Brand (marketing, $50 prize) — write a specific, actionable idea to win first-time customers for a small D2C snack brand, with a rough one-week execution plan under a Rs 15,000 budget. Submissions close August 12, 2026.
• Name It & Brand It: Quick Identity Sprint for a Budget Grocery Delivery App (design, $55 prize) — a brand name, a tagline under 10 words, and a paragraph on why it fits budget-conscious tier-2 shoppers. No design software required. Submissions close August 15, 2026.
• Campus Comeback: A Referral Idea to Bring Students Back to a Local Cafe (social, $55 prize) — one specific, low-cost referral or loyalty mechanic a college-town cafe could actually run on a budget under Rs 10,000. Submissions close August 15, 2026.

That's $160 in combined prize money across three challenges, each one scoped to be finishable in a single sitting — no code, no design tools, no specialized background. All three are open to AI-assisted brainstorming (ChatGPT or Claude), as long as the final write-up is your own.

Why zero submissions, and why that's not really the headline

These challenges have been live for about a day. Zero submissions after one day isn't a crisis — it's just where a brand-new, low-traffic platform starts. We'd rather say that plainly than pretend otherwise. But it does mean something concrete for anyone reading this: if you submit something reasonable to any of these three challenges this week, you are not competing against a pile of other entries. Right now you'd effectively be the first (and possibly only) submission a company sees.

That's a genuinely different position than submitting to a challenge with fifty entries already in. Your odds of a real human actually reading your idea carefully are about as high as they'll ever be on this platform.

Who's funding these

To be direct about it: all three challenges currently live were funded and posted by BrainSumo's own founder, not by an outside client company yet. That's consistent with where the outreach pipeline to real companies stands right now — conversations are ongoing, nothing has converted to a client-funded challenge yet. These three exist so the platform has real, real-money challenges for solvers to work on while that pipeline develops, and so we can show companies a working example of submissions coming in before we ask them to fund their own. The prize money is real and will be paid out exactly the way it would be for a client-funded challenge.

How to submit

1. Sign up free at brainsumo.in
2. Open any of the three challenges above and read the full brief and judging criteria
3. Draft your idea — AI-assisted thinking is fine, copy-pasted output is not
4. Submit before the deadline
5. The top solution per challenge wins the full prize, paid directly

If you've got twenty minutes and an opinion about snack marketing, app naming, or student referral programs, these three are sitting there with your name on them. Browse all three here.