Kanav Gupta wins BizPitch Competition

Department of Computer Science and Engineering undergraduate student Kanav Gupta won the 2026 University of Minnesota BizPitch Competition. 

BizPitch is a University-run competition in which undergraduate students have the opportunity to present a new business idea to a panel of entrepreneurs and investors. The 90-second presentation is similar to the TV show, “Shark Tank.” The competition's grand prize is a $2,000 check. 

Gupta presented GoTix, a peer-to-peer ticket marketplace built exclusively for verified Big Ten college students. He initially launched the company as GopherTicket.com, where it organically grew to 100K views and 1,500 monthly active users without any paid marketing. After receiving consistent feedback about a mobile app with a streamlined experience, Gupta rebuilt it from the ground up. GoTix will launch this summer — expanding to all Big Ten schools.

Gupta decided to pitch GoTix at BizPitch due to his personal experience with tickets.

“GoTix solves a problem I ran into firsthand,” he said. “Buying and selling tickets as a college student is messy and full of scams. I knew the market, I knew the pain point, and I’d already proven there was demand. It felt like the right story to tell.”

Gupta chose the University of Minnesota because of its strong computer science program and the tight-knit entrepreneurship community. 

“It felt like the right place to build,” Gupta said. “I wanted to attend a campus integrated within a city, offering access to all the resources a metropolitan area provides. The University of Minnesota campus was the right choice.”

Reflecting on his BizPitch experience, Gupta found momentum to be everything in the early stages.

“The traction GopherTicket got before I had a polished product showed that a real problem, even with a rough solution, moves people,” he said. “That validated the rebuild.”