World Esports Cup 2021: Inspiring Journeys of Indian Esports Athletes Aiming Big Against Pakistan and Nepal-
Ashwani Yadav aka Ignite
Team : Desi Gamers.
Winning the hearts of millions is still not enough for Ignite! Dreams to see his parents come for his matches one day- While people called him “ziddi and nalayak” he ensured nothing could come in between him and his love for video gaming. This fire was ignited back in 2017 when Ashwani Yadav, a young boy from Agra was introduced to the Free Fire game by his friend and since that day, Ashwani aka ‘Ignite’ has not looked back in life. Yadav leads Desi Gamers Esports team is among the top 5 YouTube Channel for Free Fire content in India with mammoth followership of 12.3 million subscribers as of date. Despite being a sensation and having followership that one can only dream of, his only hope and wish is, one day his parents will come to see him play Live.
Ashwani started playing free fire three months after the launch in 2017, at that time he would use his brother’s or mother’s phone to play games. In 2019 he and his team played a professional tournament for the first time which was organized by India Today Group. After some time Ashwani stopped playing the game but his friend Iconic ( Popular Esports Player Himself ) pushed him to continue playing as Esports is thriving in India. In 2020 Ignite formed his own team 4AM with whom he participated in multiple tournaments which includes Free Fire Pro League India, Conquest Free Fire Open, Free Fire India Championship Spring to name a few, after a gritty performance in FFIC Spring his team name changed to Survivor 4AM. As part of Free Fire India Championship 2021 Fall, he represented India at Asian Level and led Desi Gamers to a fourth-place finish.
The journey wasn’t easy and there was no dearth of setbacks as he aimed for the top as a Free Fire player in India. He has also represented his team in some key international tournaments and is now a pro in Free Fire Competitions.
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World Esports Cup 2021: Inspiring Journeys of Indian Esports Athletes Aiming Big Against Pakistan and Nepal
ZAID AFSAR
Team: Black Flag Army
Small Town Boy Zaid’s Big and Fiery Dreams- It’s the story of a small-town boy with big dreams. Hailing from Pratapgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Zaid had lost his father at a very young age and grew up mostly being looked after by his mother. He is currently pursuing a degree in BCom. Zaid’s first brush with video games happened in 2018 playing games casually for fun with friends and classmates mobiles. It was around this time only that he came across the Free Fire tournament one day on YouTube.
He soon understood the nuances of the game and started participating in tournaments. The starting thought was difficult but Zaid’s resilience ensured he could not only play tournaments with his slow and low-end mobile but win them too. While bad network and lag would continue to plague him but that didn’t stop his commitment toward becoming an esports player. In a span of six months, he managed to win 35 thousand as prize money from various online tournaments and was finally able to buy a high-end smartphone for his matches.
With irregular income and financial challenges at home, Zaid had the challenging task to always convincing his mother and buying more time to prove his abilities in gaming. In the recent years that he started earning handsomely and when everything seemed fine in life is when a huge setback struck him again. Ahead of the pandemic, Zaid had shifted to emulator but things changed drastically when the emulator got banned in February 2020. There were no matches and his teams had disbanded and everything came to a standstill and so did Zaid’s earnings!
It came to a point where he had mentally decided to quit gaming and start working in his home town but as fate would have it, he came across some quality gamers online and restarted his Esports career with a brand new team-Black Flag Army. As a team, their first official tournament was the Free Fire City Open where they finished second in state qualifiers and third in the Finals, just one point short of second place. The team name is dedicated to his online mentor who he is yet to meet physically but he is confident of a great show at the World Esports Cup 2021 and is surely aiming for a top-class show.
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