Anuj Shrivatri Becomes India's 100th GM, 38 Years After Anand

India has its 100th grandmaster. IM Anuj Shrivatri, 22, won the 7th ASEAN+ Open Chess Championship in the Philippines on 7/9, finishing alone in first place after losing his opening round.

The number lands 38 years after Viswanathan Anand became India’s first grandmaster in 1988. Anand himself reacted on social media, joking that he had been thinking only that day that December 2027 would be the 40th anniversary of his own GM title “and literally this manifested.”

How the title came

Anuj arrived with one GM norm, from Budapest last November, and was hoping for a second.

The ASEAN+ championship is one of the few events whose winner receives the GM title directly, whatever his norms or rating. It is a different route from the one described in our explainer on how a player becomes a grandmaster, which normally requires norms plus a 2500 rating.

He was seeded fourth at 2450, behind Vietnamese IM Nguyen Quoc Hy (2474). After the opening-round loss he went undefeated, with six wins and two draws.

Wins in the last two rounds secured first place, half a point ahead of GM Duc Hoa Nguyen of Vietnam. Filipino FM Alekhine Nouri took third on tiebreak with 6/9. Anuj’s final-round win over IM James Morris of Australia clinched both the tournament and the title.

Where India stands

FIDE’s November list shows 97 Indian grandmasters. Anuj, IM Ethan Vaz and IM Rathanvel V S are awaiting formal confirmation, which is how the count reaches 100. Pending titles are excluded from the list figures below.

India is fourth by total GMs, behind Russia (184), the United States (115) and Germany (103).

Among active grandmasters, India already shares the lead on 74 with Russia and Germany. The United States has 73. Chess.com notes India could pass Germany in 2027 if its recent pace holds.

The active figure is the telling one. Russia’s total includes many names from an earlier era, while India’s pool is young: 36 of its 74 active GMs were born in 2000 or later, against 17 born before 1990.

The mean age of active Indian GMs is 29.4, and the youngest, GM-elect Ethan Vaz, is 15.2. You can see where today’s players sit in The Chess Herald’s FIDE Top 100 and, for the women, the FIDE Women’s Top 25.

What Shah expects next

IM Sagar Shah, co-founder of ChessBase India, called it “an amazing moment for Indian chess.” He noted that every Indian GM is still alive, “which just goes to show how young this achievement is.” India has added around 60 grandmasters in the nearly 11 years since he and WIM Amruta Mokal launched ChessBase India.

He pointed to the 1st Chola Chess Open in Chennai, where nine players made title norms, seven of them IM norms. One was 10-year-old FM Sarbartho Mani, the sixth youngest ever to make an IM norm. Shah first predicted 200 GMs by 2035, then corrected himself: “200 GMs in 2032!”

The route behind the title

Anuj earned his IM title at 15 in 2020 and later worked as a software engineer for a German firm. He quit to play full time.

His father Ashok told The Indian Express: “You need to focus at least eight to nine hours on your chess if you want to chase success in the sport. Juggling that and a software engineering job was not possible.”

“It feels very good to become a GM and that too being (India’s) 100th is also special,” Anuj told The Hindu. His next goals, as he told The Times of India: a 2600 rating and “as many tournaments as I can.”