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Former Redbird races to launch VR sports app

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2 weeks ago

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Aneel Gillan ’23 is hitting the ground running in his professional career after sharpening his competitive edge as a Redbird track and field decathlete.

“In the decathlon, if you go out and master the first five events of the day, you still have five other events that you need to master,” Gillan said. “So, it was always an endless pursuit, and now, I can apply that same thing to business.”
























































































A computer science major, Gillan earned a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State in December and is now employed by Dell in Austin, Texas. When he wraps up his workday, Gillan starts his second job: developing VRtual Playbook, a virtual reality (VR) sports software startup created at Illinois State that aims to enhance the film-watching and training experience for elite athletes.

Gillan has always been passionate about sports. A native of White Rock, British Columbia, he was a Canadian national champion in the pentathlon and a two-time multievent high school state champion. Gillan was recruited by several NCAA Division I track and field programs but decided to attend Illinois State University where his sister, Priya Gillan ’22, was a goalkeeper for the Redbird soccer team.

Gillan took first place and a $10,000 prize for his VR sports app, VRtual Playbook, at the Startup Showcase in November 2023. 

“It seemed like the perfect balance of athletics and academics,” Gillan said. “I was like, ‘Yes, this is where I want to be.’ This place has been home for me and my sister.”

Gillan appreciated support from his Redbird coaches to major in computer science and pursue extracurricular opportunities. During the recruiting process, he said other schools discouraged balancing such a rigorous academic path with sports. But Gillan made clear to his Illinois State coaches and advisors early on that his ambitions extended beyond track and field. “They were very accommodating,” he said. 

Gillan competed for the Redbirds from 2020-23, placing 10th overall in the heptathlon at the 2021 Indoor Missouri Valley Conference Championship.

“I learned the importance of teamwork,” Gillan said. “There’s more than 100 of us (on the team), and you have so many different personalities and people from so many different places. I learned how to work together as a team to win.”

Gillan also served as president of the Cybersecurity Club for two years and was a senator for the Student Government Association. In spring 2023, he was elected student body president but resigned after a couple weeks to pursue a summer internship with Dell. 

That internship led to Gillan’s full-time job as a sales engineer with Dell’s original equipment manufacturing division where he is an intermediary between technical developers and the client-facing sales team.

“I wanted to go into a career where I can talk to people and have a lot of customer engagement, while also being on the business side of things,” Gillan said. “By being a sales engineer, I’m able to do that.”

In the evenings, Gillan works with his business partner, Nachi Rotte, to develop VRtual Playbook. They came up with the idea last summer while considering sports applications for VR technology.

Gillan collaborated with Charles Edamala, Illinois State’s associate vice president for Technology Solutions, and Dr. Roy D. Magnuson, an associate professor of Creative Technologies, to create a prototype.

“We created an application that transforms the film-watching experience from watching it on your tablet or a whiteboard to putting on the VR goggles and seeing the X’s and O’s as real players moving on the court.”

—Aneel Gillan ’23

“As an athlete, Aneel has insight into the multibillion-dollar professional sports industry, and I suggested he look into a product that uses VR there,” Edamala said. “He then ran with it and got input from the ISU men’s basketball team, researchers, and others. He developed the final concept almost entirely with this team and Dr. Roy Magnuson’s input.”

VRtual Playbook was initially designed to immerse basketball players in a virtual environment for them to review and practice plays. 

“We created an application that transforms the film-watching experience from watching it on your tablet or a whiteboard to putting on the VR goggles and seeing the X’s and O’s as real players moving on the court,” Gillan said.

Last fall Gillan’s pitch for VRtual Playbook won the Startup Showcase, a Shark Tank-style competition hosted by Illinois State’s George R. and Martha Means Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. The $10,000 grand prize is funding Gillan’s efforts to develop and launch VRtual Playbook this spring.

Since then, Gillan and Rotte have also shifted their focus to an application for football instead of basketball, and they have partnered with two Power Five athletics programs to conduct beta testing.

“Ten years ago, we never would have thought that players would be looking at tablets to review film during timeouts like they do now,” Gillan said. “Ten years from now, they might be putting on VR goggles. We want to spearhead that and make that a reality.”

Gillan is excited about the future and grateful for his experience at Illinois State, from the track to the computer lab.

“At ISU, I learned to choose what I’m passionate about and really pursue that,” Gillan said. “With VRtual Playbook, getting to develop an app that creates a virtual sports environment has become a passion.”

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