Esports, now a medal event at Hangzhou Asian Games, has a rising star in India. Meet this 21-year-old athlete from Bandra

“When we look at the old house from this one, it shows us where we were, right down, and how Jonathan has been climbing, climbing, climbing. He’s gone way above,” says Jonathan’s father, Jude.

The boy from Bandra is now one of the most recognised faces in the Indian esports ecosystem; a new-age star in a modern-day sport that is now a medal event at the Asian Games in Hangzhou. The rise of esports — particularly BGMI (Battlegrounds Mobile India), the sport that Jonathan competes in for a team called GodLike Esports — can be documented by the fact that since last year, Star Sports has been broadcasting the BGMI Masters Series on multiple channels. Jio Cinema jumped in on the bandwagon this year and streamed a different event, called the Battlegrounds Mobile India Series (BGIS). BGMI is said to have over 100 million users in the country. The Asian Games version of PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds) is banned in India because of its Chinese source, so Jonathan finds himself not in Hangzhou.

“From being nothing to this, till now the journey has been quite impressive,” says Jonathan, talking about his career, but he may well have been talking about the rise of esports as well.

You can take one cursory glance at the thick gold chains jangling around his neck and wrist to get a measure of his “quite impressive” journey. Or the Mustang parked in the garage. Or the BMW car he gifted his father last year. Or you could look at the 5.45 million subscribers he gained on YouTube in five years of starting the account. Or the Bandra house he has bought. Any Mumbaikar will tell you that owning a home in Bandra West is a status symbol. It’s the pin code that houses bluebloods of superstarstardom such as Sachin Tendulkar, Shah Rukh Khan, Ranbir Kapoor and Salman Khan.

But for Jonathan, the new house is not about bragging rights.

“I don’t want to forget my roots. Where I came from matters to me. It was just a one-BHK house where it all started for me. I don’t come from a rich family. When I was looking to buy a house, my parents said they wanted to live in the same area they had grown up in. You know how parents are. That’s why I bought a house here,” says Jonathan.

For Jonathan, the view of his old home that his new house offers is a way of staying connected to his roots. It’s also a reminder, his way of never losing sight of where he started from. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)

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At his old house, where the family is still living while the new house gets refurbished, Jude, who is an internet-and-cable provider in Bandra, set up four WiFi connections a few years ago as his son’s career was taking off.

“Mera YouTube pe livestream band nai hona chahiye, iske liye (So that my YouTube livestreams don’t face a lag),” says Jonathan, in his Bambaiya best. Jonathan’s career owes a great debt to his parents, primarily because they were not the kind to impose their expectations on their son as he was growing up.

Jonathan likes to tell the story of how he got one of his first phones — an iPhone X. That iPhone X is still somewhere in the old house, preserved as a keepsake even though it stopped working many years ago. He likes the story, and the old phone, not just because it was his first real step to the top, but because it also shows the role that his parents played in his career.

“Who I am today is because of them. If my parents had not bought that device back then and done all they have for me, I would not be here,” he says. “Back in the day, when I used to play and get four kills in a game, my dad would tell me, ‘What is this? Just four? Kill more!’ That’s where the hunger comes from. People know me for my kills, that’s credit to my dad. He has shaped me into the guy I am today.”

Jonathan Amaral inherited his hunger and passion for sport of all kinds from his father Jude. But it’s his mother Leticia who is fanatically invested in Jonathan’s esports career. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)

Not just his hunger, there were many things he inherited from Jude, who used to play sports of every hue back for St Stanislaus, an educational institution with a proven pedigree on the school sports circuit in Mumbai. Jonathan also went to the same school, where he would play football and hockey, usually on the right flank as a forward.

“Sports is in the family blood,” says Jude. But a bout of dengue, and some incessant mocking from his classmates due to his height, made Jonathan drift away. The void was soon filled by PUBG (which is an early iteration of BGMI, before it was banned in India).

“Kids would call him ‘aye tingu, aye tingu’ in school. He used to be sad about that. I used to push the coaches in school to stop that. Now those same kids come home asking for his autograph. They will come with requests that he make an appearance at their college fests,” says Jude. “From Day 1, when he started playing PUBG, we were monitoring his gaming. You can say we were studying the game along with him. I tried playing the game once or twice. I still have it downloaded on my mobile right now. I used to play Clash of Clans,” he says.

But it’s his wife Leticia who is fanatical about Jonathan’s gaming career. “My wife writes down all the things about his tournament and results in a long notebook even now. She keeps track of his standing in every tournament. When Jonathan plays, she will be glued to the stream. She is very active here behind the scenes. She won’t get up for anything. Anybody comes, anybody goes in our home, she’s not interested. By now she must have discarded at least 20 to 25 logbooks with notes about his gameplay. If his team doesn’t perform well, she will start cursing at the TV,” says Jude, with a chuckle.

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In a still young career, Jonathan has experienced heady highs but also moments that would have left anyone else disoriented. One of them was when PUBG was banned in 2020. The game made a comeback as BGMI in July 2021, but was again banned temporarily last year for 10 months due to concerns about data sharing with China.

But the biggest — and the most personal — setback was when many of his rival teams wrote to game developers asking them to bar him for being a ‘hacker’.

“A lot of other teams ganged up against him and wrote an email to Tencent Games, the game publisher back when it was PUBG, that he’s a hacker and that he should be banned. I have never seen him more demotivated in life than that moment,” says Abhijeet ‘Ghatak’ Andhare, who has known Jonathan since the early days — the grind days, as they like to call it — of his career. Ghatak is not only one of Jonathan’s closest friends, but is also the coach of the GodLike Esports team.

Jonathan Amaral’s story perfectly symbolises the rise of esports — particularly BGMI, the sport that Jonathan competes in for a team called GodLike Esports. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)

Downcast due to the allegations, he fought them in the only way he could think of: showing his skills on a livestream to prove there was nothing amiss.

“I was just a newbie back then. So I was feeling low. But now I feel proud, that even back then I was playing at a level that others thought I was hacking. That was one of my first streams,” says Jonathan, whose 418 videos on YouTube have racked up over 512 million views.

He shut up his detractors with that one stream, and also embraced a new catchphrase: ‘Hacker or what’.

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BGMI, like every other esport, is the playground of the young and the restless. There is plenty of money to be made as well, especially for the players at the top.

When a teenage player joins an esports team, usually the only source of income they have is the salary they get from the team. The lowest salary could be Rs 25,000 to Rs 30,000 per month. Salaries can rise to Rs 4 lakh to Rs 5 lakh per month. Money depends on the player’s popularity as well.

There are wild figures quoted when talk turns to how much money the truly top stars like Mortal, Scout and Jonathan make.

“Depending on how good the player is and how much demand there is, a top athlete can make up to Rs 30 to 40 lakh a month. There are players like Jonathan, Scout and Mortal who have the power to make a crore in a month,” says Ghatak, who goes on to add that there have been months Jonathan has ended up pocketing a crore in a month.

An esport athlete, particularly in a popular game like BGMI, has multiple avenues to make money. While top players like Jonathan are paid a monthly salary by their team as part of their contract, they also earn sizeable moolah each month from YouTube or other streaming services. Then there are the brand tie-ups or the long-term endorsement deals, says Hardik Shankar Meena, who is responsible for brand partnerships at Numen eSports and Gaming, the talent management and partnerships agency of GodLike Esports.

Not just the money, there is plenty of fame on offer as well. Jonathan remembers a time when he was playing in a tournament in Malaysia, when a fan turned up begging for his jersey. Another time at another event abroad, two pilots from Karachi had sought him out just for a selfie.

“In the last five years, I have seen way too many players who had the calibre to be the best. But there are distractions in this profession that take you away from the sport.

Your priorities change,” says Ghatak, who adds that Jonathan has not changed too much despite all the trappings that success has brought him.

“Jonathan has spent plenty of money over the past few months, sure. But you look at all the things he has bought with his money, they are all investments,” says Hardik, who guides the youngster in matters of finances.

“I never look at my bank statement. I focus on my roots and the game,” says Jonathan, “My father had the dream of purchasing a BMW car and he once told me he cannot afford it. So I bought it for him. The things that my parents couldn’t purchase back in the day, now I can give them. Whatever they want.”

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Winning Edge

When Jonathan plays, he holds the screen perilously close to his face. He uses just his two thumbs to manoeuvre, evade returning fire and shoot. Jonathan’s two-thumb style is popular with beginners but most top players in the world turn their hands into claws, using three, four — or even five — fingers to play. The four-finger claw technique helps a player multi-task in the game.

The buttons and controls are also invisible on Jonathan’s screen, meaning he is pressing commands based on pure muscle memory.

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Esports at Hangzhou 2023

Fifteen esports athletes from India are competing at the Hangzhou Asian Games, the first time it’s a medal sport at the continental event. The event will take place in a glitzy arena, built specially for the Games like a spaceship. Korea and China have some of the top names in the sport

The seven official esports events at the tournament are: Arena of Valor Asian Games Version, Dota 2, Dream Three Kingdoms 2, FIFA Online 4, League of Legends, Peace Elite Asian Games Version (a rebranded version of PUBG Mobile) and Street Fighter V: Champion Edition

Indians participated in four of the seven titles: DOTA 2 (Darshan Bata captains the Indian team, which also has Krish Gupta, Abhishek Yadav, Ketan Goyal, and Shubham Goli); FIFA Online 4 (Charanjot Singh and Karman Singh Tikka); League of Legends (Akshaj Shenoy led the Indian team which also had Samarth Arvind Trivedi, Mihir Ranjan, Aditya Selvaraj, Aakash Shandilya and Sanindhya Malik); Street Fighter V: Champion Edition (Mayank Prajapati and Ayan Biswas).