- Lived:
- born 11 December 1969, Madras (Chennai) → Manila as a boy, then Madras again → tournament halls on five continents, with long years based in Collado Mediano near Madrid → Chennai, where he lives today (living — verified as of September 2026)
- Field:
- chess — India's first grandmaster, world champion across two eras of the title, and the acknowledged father of the Indian chess boom
- The Big Idea:
- One person can be a pipeline. A boy taught by his mother in a country with zero grandmasters became world champion — and then, instead of guarding the summit, built the road up it, so that India now produces elite chess players faster than any nation on earth.
- In their words:
- "Nowadays, if you're not a grandmaster at fourteen, you can forget about it" — a line he has repeated, half in wonder, about the generation he created (as of September 2026)
- If you remember one thing:
- In 1988 India had no grandmasters; in 2024 an eighteen-year-old from Anand's own city became the youngest world champion in history — and between those two facts stands, essentially, one patient man.