With the grand finals of BATTLEGROUNDS MOBILE INDIA SERIES (BGIS) 2025 now concluded in Kolkata, the focus shifts to the future of BGMI esports in India. In an exclusive interview held during the BGIS Grand Finals, Karan Pathak, the Associate Director of Esports at KRAFTON India, shared insights with VIVEK SINGH, Sub-Editor at InsideSport, on upcoming plans for prize pool augmentation, the BGMI Rising Stars program, and potential new tournament structures for the region.
Krafton India’s Karan Pathak on Community Involvement in BGIS 2025
Q. The initial prize pool of BGIS 2026 was to 2 crore and community involvement had added 1.2 crore so do you see the model for the prize pool augmentation becoming a standard future esports events?
There will be changes to it. Of course, we want to make it bigger and better. We are already in talks with our product team for 2026 regarding how to make changes and also benefit the fans. With the BGIS 2025 Crate, the ₹1.2 crore support that the prize pool has received from the players allows us to try and get more and more creative. However, there are limitations with development as well. So, based on the development plans from the product team and the developers, we will decide the plans for 2026.
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Q. Can you tell us more about BGMI Rising Stars problem? What are the key qualities you look at the talent while selecting them?
Firstly, the most important goal for them was to register on the Krafton India Esports website. The website has a registration section for Rising Stars, and once they registered there, close to over 3000 people participated. It took us about three weeks to go through the applications where details were collected in a way that we couldn’t easily map out their total subscribers.
We didn’t ask them about their channel size, so we had to actually go to each channel and see when they had last posted. The best part was we found one player who was very active in 2021 but then disappeared from the scene, and they had applied. So, I actually called him up and said, “Hey, you applied, but there’s nothing active either. Do you want to make a move?” For him, my answer was, “Why don’t you start again? Maybe you can join the second edition.” Of course, a minimum criterion that we maintained, because the initial 3000 applicants were narrowed down to 10, was a minimum of 5000 subscribers on any channel they had. And then, they needed to be an active esports player.
Please do not consider these individuals as content creators primarily; they are esports players first, and then they create content as a deliverable. They want to grow their channels, and it’s often said that once you are an esports player, you should stream so that people can also enjoy watching you and the game.
Q. Are there any new formats like franchise or anything, tournament structure or initiatives that KRAFTON India considering for the future of regimes?
Since the tournament format always or the structure of tournament is always new, we try to introduce something new even with this BGIS 2025. BGMI Pro Series aka BMPS 2025 Will also have a new tournament format/structure. With regards to franchisee league in BGMI Esports. You’ll have to wait for the official announcement in future.
The post Krafton India’s Karan Pathak on BGIS 2025 Prize Pool, BGMI Rising Stars, and Future Plans appeared first on Inside Sport India.