Valorant: Will Paytm and Riot Games announce a partnership over the game tomorrow?

This is not the first time that the Indian esports scene will see a partnership between Paytm and Riot Games. They have previously done it in the case of Teamfight Tactics in June and it would seem that history will be repeating itself in the next few days.

The two organisations have announced a webinar

The two companies will be conducting a webinar tomorrow and will have the following personalities participate in them: Shudhanshu “AnAthEmA” Gupta, Anurag “Kn1ghtm@r3” Khurana, Sukamal “trashhead00” Pegu, Gagandeep “Sikhwarrior” Singh, Tejas “Ace” Sawant and Kiran “ShaDeSLaYer” Noojibail.

It certainly feels like the Webinar will turn out to be a rather big deal as the future of Valorant’s esports scene in India will likely be discussed.

What topics related to Valorant can be discussed?

As we are yet to get more information on the points that the attendees will be touching over in the webinar, we can’t help but feel that at least one of the following topics regarding Valorant will be discussed:

• The Indian Valorant server (which Riot promised would arrive later this year).
• The future of Valorant esports in India.
• Upcoming tournaments with substantial prize pools.
• India’s very own Valorant esports league.

Their previous endeavours

It was in the 9th of June, 2020 that Paytm First Games, one of India’s leading gaming destinations, announced that it will be partnering with Riot Games to organise the region's very first TFT mobile tournament.

The tournament was held from the 17th to the 21st of June and boasted a substantial prize pool of Rs. 75,000/-, which is a lot when one considers it was their very first edition of the tournament. It saw 512 participants who needed to first register through the Paytm First Games app and then compete in a lot of elimination rounds.

When commenting on the tournament itself, Sudhanshu Gupta, the COO of Paytm First Games said:

“We continue to stay committed to our mission of bringing world-class gaming experience to our users and this partnership will help us to move a step ahead in this direction. This Teamfight Tactics tournament will be the biggest one ever organized in India in terms of prize money and participation. We are going to live with it in the next 2 days and hope to expand our partnership with Riot in the near future.”

Incidentally, Sukamal Pegu, the publishing head of Riot Games South Asia also added:

“Namaste India. We are extremely proud to partner with PFG to bring TFTm to where it matters most to us at Riot, which is our players. We have great plans for India considering that we have just started our journey on mobile this year. Our relationship with India is just starting and we will work hard to constantly delight our fans and players here.”

The TFT endeavour was a success for both these organisations, and we can only hope that Paytm First Games can be to Valorant what ESL/Nodwin is to CS: GO in India.