Akshaj Shenoy has been playing against the odds his entire life.
At 24, he will captain India’s team at the Asian Games 2026 in Aichi-Nagoya. But the real fight started long before this tournament. It started when he was a kid in Kochi with a shared PC and a game nobody in India cared about. It continued when he had to hop between foreign servers because India did not have one. It persisted when his relatives mocked what he was doing, when society said this was not a real career, and when the infrastructure did not exist.
Now he faces the odds again. India’s group at the Asian Games is brutal. The toughest possible draw. South Korea will be there. Chinese Taipei will be there. Teams that have been building professional ecosystems for 15 years while India is just starting to believe esports was real.
But here is what matters: if India wins, it will be the country’s first esports medal at the Asian Games. That is what he is playing for.
“I wanted to prove something,” Akshaj said in an exclusive interview with India Today.
He always has.
KOCHI, THE PC, THE GAME
Akshaj grew up fighting his cousins for time on a shared PC. When they left, the machine was his. As most 90s kids would relate, most high-end games would not run on it. Too demanding. League of Legends would. He downloaded it after seeing some videos on YouTube, started playing for fun, and that was it for ten years.
Just a hobby for a kid with time to kill.
As he was building his skills in the game, he hopped servers looking for competition. North America. Europe. Japan. The ping made everything unplayable. The connection was terrible. The equipment was wrong. But he kept playing anyways.
One day while playing on the Japanese server, he found a fellow Indian player.
“Why are you playing here?” the stranger asked.
That one conversation led him to the Indian League of Legends community. It was small. Real tournaments existed, but barely. Real players existed, but they were scattered across the country. By 11th grade, Akshaj had a plan. He identified the best player in every role. Then he approached them all.
Stop playing separately. Form a super team. See where that goes.
They said yes. His experience there gave him insights into leadership. Not because there was a pathway or a system. Simply because he liked the game and wanted to build something from it.
THE PATTERN REPEATS
The team competing at this edition of the Asian Games came together over many years.
Three players stayed with him from India’s 2022 team, which finished fifth in Hangzhou. Ahmed Shahid joined them. They won domestic tournaments. They beat Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern teams on multiple occasions.
Then Rahul Bisht and Sanindhya Malik joined for the qualification push.
This is not a pickup squad. They have faced odds their entire careers, as most gamers do when trying to get into the professional setup. Playing on Malaysian servers because India does not have one. Training at night because the server is 2.5 hours ahead. Trying to compete against countries that have professional infrastructure when India barely has one.
They have done well in the South Eastern tournaments.
But none of that prepares you for South Korea. None of that prepares you for the infrastructure gap. None of that prepares you for teams that have been doing this professionally for 15 years while you were still teaching yourself the game.
But they know how to play against the odds. They have done it their whole lives.
THE CAPTAIN
In cricket, the captain sets the field. In League of Legends, the captain calls the shots. Literally.
Akshaj plays mid-lane, the centre of the map. During matches, he decides the pace. He tells the others what to do. His voice overrides everyone else’s.
But that only works if they trust him. Akshaj is not one to shy away from conflict. He confronts it. If feelings get hurt or egos clash, and in a competitive game they will, he makes sure everyone says it out loud.
“We’re really good teammates because we’re really good friends,” he said.
The team is spread across India. Akshaj in Kochi. The rest in the north. They barely see each other. They train on Malaysian servers at night. They sleep at 2 or 3 a.m. because the server is ahead of Indian time.
But they know each other’s routines. Aakash goes to the gym. Rahul reads. Ahmed and Akshaj play single-player games. They check in. They look after each other.
What they do not have is time together in the same room before the biggest tournament of their lives. What they do not have is the foundations that South Korean teams have.
What they have is each other and the stubborn sense of belief that they can do it anyway.
THE WEIGHT OF REPRESENTATION
When not in the Indian setup for the Asian Games, He played for himself. For his team. For the sponsors.
Then it changed.
“Previously, we were playing for ourselves, for our own rank,” he said. “Now there is something actually on the line. There is our integrity, and we have to uphold our country’s image too. Representing the country just feels really good.”
His relatives had mocked it for years.
“What is your boy doing? He’s playing all the time,” they would ask his parents.
Now they say nothing. He is Team India. He is the captain. He is part of India’s bid for a maiden esports medal.
His parents had worried too. What if the career dried up? What if another player came along? What if it was all a bubble?
“They thought it was an actual career opportunity after I started representing India,” Akshaj said. “Even if I was earning from it, for them it was uncertain. But after representing India, they believed it was possible.”
That belief matters. It keeps him going. It also adds weight. Failure is not just his failure. It is a failure to prove that this career path exists in a country that does not believe in it yet. It is a failure to push esports into the Indian mainstream. It is a failure to prove that the odds can be beaten.
THE GRIND
The week before the Asian Games, He trains nine to twelve hours daily. But he starts at 7 p.m., plays through the night, sleeps at 2 or 3 a.m.
Normally it is six or seven hours. This is not normal.
To break from the cycle and blow off some steam, he does yoga. Well he tries to by his own admission. His mum wants it daily. Sometimes he plays single-player games to step away from the grind.
“When you play competitively for so long, you start seeing it differently,” he said. “You may not even enjoy it because it’s too competitive for you.”
He also knows the cost of sitting at a screen all day.
“You’re just sitting all the time, and that is physically harmful. It’s also bad for the mind because your mind starts wandering, so you have to start physically wandering to meet that need.”
But 12 hours a day on a Malaysian server is not the same as 12 hours a day on proper equipment without lagging servers. When they land in Japan, they will have to adjust. The top contenders, perhaps not so much. They have been playing on these conditions for years. That is just another way the odds are stacked.
THE DRAW
Akshaj flew to Japan on 25 September. It’s his first time in the country.
The draw was brutal. India landed with the top two teams in the tournament. On paper, the odds are not in their favour.
In 2022, India finished fifth. They did not make it out of groups.
This time, the draw put them with the last tournament’s gold and silver medalists. South Korea won gold in 2022. Chinese Taipei won silver. Hong Kong is there too. Teams with over a decade of professional infrastructure. Teams that have already proven they can win on this stage.
Except India has beaten every Southeast Asian and Middle Eastern team they have faced. They finished top. They are the strongest in South Asia.
Gold will likely go to Korea again. But silver and bronze?
“I would say yeah, there is belief that we can push for a medal this time. Not for gold, though. But I would say silver and bronze are well within our reach if the groups allowed us to,” he said.
They have to beat one of the three best teams in the tournament just to have a chance at a medal.
It is not impossible. But not easy either.
THE GAP
There is a real gap between India’s esports scene and everyone else’s. Akshaj knows this. He talks about it plainly.
Korea has had professional League of Legends for 15 years. There is infrastructure. There are coaches. There are servers. There are salaries that make sense.
India has talent scattered across the country, training on foreign servers, hoping.
Akshaj is 24. He is doing an MBA. He is balancing competitive gaming with a future that may not involve gaming at all. Most professional players in Korea do not have that balance. They cannot afford to.
India’s esports ecosystem is still building. Valorant maybe. The rest? Eighty to 90 per cent of the viable careers are in mobile games.
“You can’t really scale it if you get what I mean,” Akshaj said about PC esports careers in India. “You can only scale it if you scale the game. You have to make it accessible to Indian people and get a regional audience, and India doesn’t have that, unfortunately.”
He is not complaining. He is stating fact. The same fact he has been living against his entire life.
WHAT IT WOULD MEAN
When he started, there was no pathway. Just a kid in Kochi at a PC. No coaches. No infrastructure. No belief in the potential that esports could bring.
Relatives questioned it. He studied anyway. He won tournaments. He built a team. He represented his country. He balanced it all.
When asked about the doubters, he did not sound angry.
“Follow your passion and don’t put down people who do. It is understandable, yes, but times have changed and so should the people,” he said.
A medal would mean something insane. Not just for him or his team. For Indian esports. For the country’s first gold medal in esports. For every kid in India right now wondering if this career path exists.
Right now, nobody believes it exists. Nobody believes a kid from Kochi can compete against Korea. Nobody believes India has a chance.
His family watches from Kochi. His team is scattered across India. Japan is unfamiliar. The groups are unforgiving.
But he has been playing against the odds his entire life. The Asian Games is just the latest test.
That is what he is betting on.
– Ends
