A bold idea from two local students is among just 60 semifinalist submissions selected from over 3,700 nationwide to pitch at the Mott Million Dollar Challenge, June 15-16 in downtown Flint.

FLINT, Mich., June 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Harswarup Bathe Balaji from Cumming, GA and Soumith Kondamadugula from Alpharetta, Georgia have been selected as a semifinalist submission in the Mott Million Dollar Challenge, a national pitch competition for K-12 students.

More than 5,300 young people from all 50 states and Washington, D.C. submitted over 3,700 business ideas and social solutions to the Challenge. From those entries, 1,500 submissions were selected in the first round. Now, the creators behind the top 60 ideas are advancing to compete at a live national event in Flint, Michigan next week.

Harswarup Bathe Balaji and Soumith Kondamadugula, 11th-grade students from Alliance Academy for Innovation and Denmark High School in the Atlanta area, created vctryprep, a comprehensive preparation platform for Career and Technical Student Organization (CTSO) competitors. Recognizing that more than one million students participate annually in organizations such as FBLA and DECA with limited access to modern preparation resources, the pair developed a platform featuring learning modules created by champion competitors, AI-powered practice and feedback, archives of winning submissions, and mentorship from top student leaders across North America. Since launching, vctryprep has attracted more than 500 waitlist signups and hundreds of thousands of social media views in just 60 days. The platform offers free core resources alongside a low-cost premium option, making high-quality competition preparation more accessible to students.

“Our goal was access first, not profit first,” said the vctryprep team in their social pitch to the Mott Million Dollar Challenge.

As a semifinalist, the project will be awarded $5,000. Harswarup and Soumith will pitch live in front of judges during the final competition June 15-16 in Flint.

Funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation as part of its centennial celebration, the Mott Million Dollar Challenge is administered by the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) in collaboration with VentureLab, Young Entrepreneur Institute (YEI), the Afterschool Alliance, Collaborative Communications and the 50 State Afterschool Network. The Challenge is designed to shine a light on entrepreneurship education as a meaningful way to help students build skills they need to navigate and shape the future.

Learn more about the Mott Million Dollar Challenge and explore semifinalist ideas at https://mottmillion.org/60-semifinalist-pitches/.

Contact:
Jen Peters
[email protected]

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