Vinesh Kannan (CS 2nd year) was named an “Entrepreneurial Eight” finalist in the national Student Startup Madness (SSM) tournament. He will pitch his company, Omnipointment, at the South by Southwest festival in Austin on Monday, March 13, along with his co-founder and friend Brendan Batliner of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The winning team will receive more than $2,000 in software and services and the mantle of “best student digital startup in America.”

The original field had 64 teams, including four from Illinois: two from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, one from the University of Chicago, and Omnipointment from Illinois Tech. Kannan’s team was the only one from Illinois to make the final eight. The other finalists are from Penn State, University of Florida, University of California-Los Angeles, Carnegie Mellon, University of Michigan, Case Western, Cornell, and New York University.