As of 2023, India is the fastest growing market for chess. We now have 82 grandmasters from India and young prodigies like Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa, Nihal Sarin, Arjun Erigaisi, Gukesh D, have taken the world by storm and have inspired millions more to take up the game.
What started as a meaningful pastime during the pandemic has now become a serious race to the top. Adding fuel to this are brands like Tech Mahindra, IIFL, Akashyakalpa, UpGrad, Quantbox Ramco, etc., who sponsoring chess players in crores and are also investing heavily to own a chess franchise similar to IPL structure (Chess Premier League, held in Dubai)
The Chess Olympiad hosted by the Government of Tamil Nadu spent over Rs 100 crore, and India contingent had a podium finish in 2022.
These have created a ripple effect for more people to take up chess. Parents are supportive of their children’s passion and are looking at organised players to provide professional coaching. This is where Chessniti Academy wants to play a part.
Mithil Anande, a computer engineer, and a data scientist by qualification, has been an avid chess player since his childhood and has represented the state of Maharashtra in national level games. “My deep passion towards chess led me to being an instructor in another academy before taking it up full time as a career,” says Anande.Chessniti academy happened by chance. Anande met his two cofounders- Sreeraman Thiagarajan and Rupali Dhuri during a tournament. “Sreeraman, besides being a tech entrepreneur, is a chess parent, which means he is among the bunch of parents who stand outside a tournament area with water bottle and snacks waiting for their child to do well at chess competition. I met him at one such tournament and we discovered our shared passion for chess,” says Anande.Rupali, a corporate lawyer by practice, always considered chess as the most civilised way to settle an argument. “And she’s an avid trekker like myself, so our encounters were always around exercising both body and the mind,” Anande says.
Together the shared interest and passion for the game lead to the creation of Chessniti Professional Academy. “Since I beat both my cofounders at the game, they decided I must be the CEO of the company,” says Anande.
Winning strategy
Anande says the vision is to inspire a billion people to take up chess as a way of life. Many attributes of chess apply in life, such as critical thinking, decision-making, and strategic planning, being graceful in defeat and so on. “Our mission is to utilise computing technology to democratise training, ensuring every aspiring player has access to world-class expertise,” says Anande.
iStockYounger children pick up Chess the fastest, with many educators claiming the best age for learning can be 6-8 years.
An online first academy, Chessniti says its coaching and training pedagogy is designed scientifically to match the playing strength of students at every level – from beginner to master. Being online has allowed the academy to reach a wider and diverse community of chess aspirants around the world and in three months since inception, the academy has signed on over 400 students from four countries.
“Our over the board tournaments are designed to not just provide real life playing experience, but to help players grasp right body language, hone sportsmanship, build camaraderie and more,” says Anande.
It’s different.
Dhuri says there are legacy chess academies which are usually centered around the founder who is an expert player, but the problem with this model is, it is not designed to scale. Then there are long-tail freelance coaches who lack process and systems, so they don’t scale either.
Chessniti Academy, by design, leverages the power of advancement in computing along with human ingenuity to make professional grade Chess coaching accessible and affordable to every aspiring player.
“We have the concepts of sequential learning, individualised approach, interactive instruction, mindset development and so on. Secondly, our curriculum is designed by international master Shantanu Bhambure and all our instructors are FIDE rated players themselves. To further strengthen the experience of our students and parents, we are adding LMS to our existing CRM module,” says Dhuri.
Business strategies
Anande says the academy has a four-pronged approach to grow its student admissions, and there’s a harmonious connection between each of them leading to a flywheel effect.
First, the academy has a robust digital marketing that creates a pipeline for its online coaching. Second, the community approach that the academy has fostered to organise over the board tournaments is open for players outside our academy, which acts as a fertile ground to get new admissions.
Third, Chessniti has forged strategic alliances with like-minded partners like co-working spaces, elite cafes, schools who collaborate with the academy to organise tournaments and coaching camps. “Fourth, our alliance with chess.com, the largest platform in the world, gives us strategic benefits for organising online tournaments, including a verified Chessniti online chess club, access and scale, fair play evaluations, and sponsoring winners of our tournament with chess.com premium memberships,” says Anande. The course fee for the academy is about Rs 3,500 per month.
What is heartening, Anande says, is that in less than 100 days of inception, few students from the academy have gained FIDE rating, while few have won inter school tournaments.
Tech play
With two of the three cofounders having a technology background, Thiagarajan says the academy is tech-first. “From student pre-screening, to on-boarding, to coaching, there is technology at every step of the way to provide a seamless and personalised learning experience. Our Cloud based SaaS tool is an AI-based chess trainer is in the works. It brings supercomputer grade chess assessment, moves trainer and personalised lesson plans to practically anyone, and once released, will be a game-changer,” says Thiagarajan.
iStockChessniti says its aim is to utilise computing technology to democratise training, ensuring every aspiring player has access to world-class expertise.
Chessniti aims to have 5000 students by Jan 2025, and as many as 10,000 subscribers to its SaaS trainer by June 2026.
However, not everything is online. The academy recently held the Chess Scholarship League (CSL), a program meant to provide benefits worth Rs. 150,000 to the scholarship recipient by way of coaching, chess software & database, books, training sessions with grandmaster, and more. Chessniti has a community involvement at a foundational level, where it fosters the love for the game through offline communities, for example with the Mulund Chess of Mumbai.
Former investment banker at JP Morgan and chess-parent Shweta Chimnani says that the academy has a team of teachers that teach kids with a lot of patience and kids enjoy their session. “They also organize chess tournaments, which motivates the kids and helps them to face challenges that help them gain additional knowledge.
Mumbai-based software engineer Avdhut Jain says it was evident that the academy was dedicated to fostering a love for chess and nurturing young talent from the moment he took a demo class.
“One of the standout qualities of the ChessNiti Academy is the exceptional team of instructors. The coaches are not only highly skilled chess players themselves but also possess a genuine passion for teaching the game,” says Jain.
Challenges and solutions
There are two areas of challenge for the cofounders. The first is around the culture in the country where cricket is the foremost sport. “But a lot has changed for good. We are no longer cricket worshippers. From Neeraj Chopra in Javelin, to Praggnanandhaa in Chess, many parents have realised their children can excel in any area. It is going to take some time before a lot more parents consider sports as an equal to academics,” says Anande.
Second, the unorganised industry players have created a smog around the quality of online coaching, “We address this by asking parents to join in and try a few classes for themselves to see the difference,” says Anande.
Anande says as an aspiring country, the education business in India is dynamic and has huge potential, but if we pump an unreasonable capital to buy your way through growth, then it will be an edifice built on loose soil. “For a chess company, planning and long-term thinking is imperative. We are working on growth that is healthy and sustainable,” says Anande.
