CHENNAI: Nine hours and 16 minutes away from Chennai, in Thiruthangal, a town better known for fireworks than grandmasters, is India's most ambitious chess experiment.
It isn’t just an experiment but also a solution to one of India’s biggest worries: How do you keep talented children in the sport without worrying about finances, training and travel? This gap prompted Gukesh's long-time coach and Grandmaster Vishnu Prasanna to start Hatsun Chess Academy in 2021.
“Hatsun [Academy] is kind of an extension of my work with Gukesh,” Prasanna told DT Next.
“It (finance) is one of the biggest challenges young talent goes through, and a reason why there’s a lot of talent who drop off, even before getting to the level of a top-100 player. Hatsun solves all their problems: financial, training and on the board,” he further explains.
Backed by Hatsun Agro Products, the residential academy attempts to remove every obstacle that prevents talented children from progressing.
Starting with all-round academics, a group of top-class coaching staff (GM Akash, 66th grandmaster in India), Mohamed Ibrahim U (FIDE 1827 rating), Gowham KK (2081 rating) and Gowtham A (1457 rating) and a gym to keep yourself healthy, Hatsun Chess Academy has it all covered.
“There's a huge fee concession, and yeah, anybody can join based on the talent that they show. The company aims to provide very high-level training from an early stage for talents. One of their key goals is to create a strong ecosystem where players have access to facilities,” he adds.
The academy today has 53 talented students across the globe, including from Scotland, Canada and various parts of India – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar, Goa, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Six Candidate Masters, five FIDE Masters, and one Women FIDE Master.
Until 2025, it was also home to two of the biggest talents to watch out for in the future – Sharvaanica AS and Tamizh Amudhan S. While Sharvaanica now trains elsewhere, Tamizh Amudhan is one of the academy’s brightest prospects – No.1 ranked in the U9 category.
“Sharvaanica used to train with us till 2025, and then we parted ways. Tamizh Amudhan S has shown his talent, like Sharvaanica, through local or self-training. Then we were able to mold them and transform their games into gradual success.”
“Amudhan hails from a small town, and came in mainly as someone who was playing Blitz. That was his main mode of training. We worked with him over the past year, and now he’s a moulded player. He is quite a dangerous player, ready to compete at Opens,” he adds.
One might assume that creating a grandmaster just requires a chessboard and pieces, right? Sreekar Channapragada, co-founder of chess management firm MGD1, did a small calculation to arrive at an estimated cost to make a grandmaster in the country. According to him, it takes up to Rs 2 crore to build a grandmaster from scratch. Academies like Hatsun aren’t merely training centres–they are financial lifelines.
“It is very expensive to have a coach by your side, reserved for you all the time. There are too many skilled players and few skilled coaches. To have a coach only for you will be expensive,” he said.
“Hatsun has been very supportive, filling those gaps. Through this ecosystem, I’m able to work with many talents simultaneously, and they get access to the coaches. In short, we are building a system for the chess ecosystem.”
India has no shortage of gifted chess players. What it has lacked is a system that prevents them from disappearing before reaching the world's elite. Hatsun's experiment is betting that talent alone doesn't create world champions--ecosystems do.