Indian Phone Brand Pays Hackers to Bolster Security

Money, trust and an open invitation. Ai+, a fledgling Indian smartphone brand, has thrown down a gauntlet to the security community: find my flaws, and get paid.

The company announced +Project Trust, a five-year program that turns ethical hackers and independent security researchers into early warning sensors for its devices. The logic is blunt and practical. Fix vulnerabilities before customers encounter them. The result should be fewer surprise breaches and a sturdier reputation for a young brand trying to stand out.

Ai+ has earmarked 100 billion rupees—about $10.5 million—across five years, roughly 20 billion rupees ($2.3 million) a year, to reward researchers and fund ongoing security work. That budget signals more than token goodwill; it’s a sustained bet on community-driven security audits rather than relying only on in-house teams.

Project Trust isn’t a one-off bug bounty. It’s integrated with Ai+’s broader privacy and software strategy, which includes the company’s native NxtQuantum OS. By inviting external experts to poke, pry and report, Ai+ expects continuous evaluation of its software stack and security mechanisms.

Why does this matter? Smartphones are personal vaults. They carry banking credentials, private conversations and health records. When a brand opens itself to scrutiny, it exposes short-term risks—researchers will find issues—but it also accelerates fixes, transparency and accountability. That’s the trade-off Ai+ is choosing.

Ai+’s CEO, Madhu Seth, took the unusual step of posting the call-to-action on Instagram, asking developers, bug hunters and security academics to register to participate. The move hints at a modern PR playbook: meet the community where it already engages, and turn goodwill into measurable security outcomes.

There are practical questions to resolve. How will Ai+ validate and prioritize reports? What disclosure timeline will be used? Will rewards scale with severity and exploitability? The company’s pledge of funding answers the “can we afford this?” question; the operational details will determine whether researchers and users both win.

For a young brand, reputation matters as much as specifications. Project Trust could be a shortcut to credibility if Ai+ follows through with transparent processes, timely patches and fair compensation. Or it could become another scalable program whose impact depends on rigorous execution.

Either way, Ai+’s bet on crowdsourced security shifts the conversation: instead of hiding vulnerabilities until a public incident forces a fix, the brand is asking for them up front. Will the wider security community answer the challenge?