Making a wise move: Bengaluru start-up marries tech and chess, builds personalised AI chess coach Premium

“The ‘children’ of Vishy Anand are on the loose!” was what the legendary Garry Kasparov remarked on social media platform X after 17-year-old Gukesh became the youngest player to win The Candidates Chess tournament. Gukesh who broke the 40-year-old record of the 61-year-old Kasparov is one of the students from the first batch of WestBridge Anand Chess Academy started by India’s first grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand.  

“The ‘children’ of Vishy Anand are on the loose!” was what the legendary Garry Kasparov remarked on social media platform X after 17-year-old Gukesh became the youngest player to win The Candidates Chess tournament. Gukesh who broke the 40-year-old record of the 61-year-old Kasparov is one of the students from the first batch of WestBridge Anand Chess Academy started by India’s first grandmaster Vishwanathan Anand.  

India has come a long way from 1987 when Vishy bagged the title. Today the country boasts of 84 grand masters. 

Ironically, while young chess prodigies seem to be flourishing in the country, the technology around the sport has not picked up much. Bengaluru-based start-up CircleChess founded by chess parents Kumar Gaurav and Swati Agarwal is trying to bridge this gap. 

Kumar Gaurav, co-founder of CircleChess, is the father of two teenagers who are active chess players. Noticing the lack of technology in the ecosystem, he sensed an opportunity to build a technology product for the larger chess community.  

But that wasn’t the only reason he co-founded the start-up with Swati Agarwal. 

“The second trigger was that my sons were not able to improve with usual methods of learning chess,” Gaurav recollects. 

“I had switched quite a few coaches back then. Eventually, I realised that chess is a sport that is easy to learn, but difficult to master. So, I started thinking about chess technology and whether I could build something which would help my children.”