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    India's grandmasters · the road to the title

    Divya Deshmukh: The Grandmaster Who Needed No Norms

    Divya Deshmukh started chess at four because she was too small for the badminton class her sister attended; her parents moved her to the chess class one floor down, run by Rahul Joshi. She won world titles at under-10 (2014) and under-12 (2017), and the World Junior Girls title in 2024.

    She had no grandmaster norms when she entered the 2025 Women's World Cup as an outsider. She won it, beating Koneru Humpy in the final, and the title made her a grandmaster directly, at 19: India's 88th grandmaster and fourth woman grandmaster. She dedicated it to her first coach, who died in 2020.

    Divya Deshmukh in 2025
    Divya Deshmukh, 2025. Photo: Frans Peeters (Flickr: Frans Peeters Photography), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
    Born
    9 Dec 2005, Nagpur, Maharashtra[1]
    Learned chess
    4, at a Nagpur sports academy[2]
    First coach
    Rahul Joshi[3]
    Grandmaster
    28 July 2025, at 19[4]
    Peak rating
    2510 (April 2026)[1]
    Coaches named in sources
    5[5]

    Tournament by tournament: the road to grandmaster

    1. 2012 · age 6

      National Under-7 Championship (girls)[5]

      Won; shared the podium with R. Praggnanandhaa (open U-7)

      First national age title

    2. 2013 · age 7

      Asian Under-8 Girls Championship[6]

      Won

      First continental youth title; her parents say she earned the WFM title by winning Asian youth in this period (FIDE lists WFM 2013)

    3. Nov 2013 · age 7

      National Under-9 Girls Championship, Chennai[6]

      Won with 9.5 points

      Second national age title; qualified her for the World Under-10 in Durban

    4. 2014 · age 8

      World Youth Chess Championship (Girls Under-10), Durban[2]

      Won

      First world title

    5. 2015 · age 9

      Asian Under-10 Girls Championship (standard and rapid)[5]

      Double gold

      Another continental youth title

    6. 2016 · age 10

      World Youth Championship (age group not stated)[5]

      Bronze, 8.5/11

      World youth medal (ChessBase India also mentions a 2015 World Youth bronze; see conflicts)

    7. Aug 2017 · age 11

      World Cadet Chess Championship (Girls Under-12), Pocos de Caldas, Brazil[2]

      Won

      Second world title

    8. Jul 2018 · age 12

      Woman International Master (WIM) title[7]

      Awarded at the FIDE Presidential Board, 8-11 July 2018, Bucharest

      First international title, at about 12½

    9. Feb 2019 · age 13

      Velammal-AICF International WGM Round Robin[8]

      Won with 8/11, performance 2410

      First WGM norm and first IM norm

    10. Feb 2019 · age 13

      Aeroflot Open 2019 (B)[8]

      4.5/9, performance 2405, as third-last seed

      Second WGM norm

    11. 2020 · age 14

      FIDE Online Chess Olympiad 2020[9]

      Team gold (India, joint with Russia)

      First Olympiad gold, in the same team as Viswanathan Anand

    12. Oct 2021 · age 15

      First Saturday GM, October 2021, Budapest[8]

      5/9, performance 2452

      Final WGM norm and second IM norm: became Woman Grandmaster (FIDE: WGM, 92nd FIDE Congress 2021)

    13. 2022 · age 16

      National Women's Championship (Bhubaneswar) and 44th Chess Olympiad (Chennai)[9]

      National women's champion; individual bronze on board 5 for India 2 (7/9)

      First senior national title and first Olympiad individual medal

    14. May 2023 · age 17

      Baku Open 2023[10]

      5/9; final IM norm with a round to spare

      International Master title (FIDE: IM, 2023 3rd FIDE Council); 12th Indian woman IM

    15. Jun 2023 · age 17

      Asian Continental Women's Championship, Almaty[11]

      Gold, unbeaten 7.5/9

      Asian women's champion; qualified for the 2023 Women's World Cup

    16. Sep 2023 · age 17

      Tata Steel Chess India Women's Rapid, Kolkata[9]

      Won, as last seed and late replacement

      First elite women's title; beat Humpy, Harika and Irina Krush

    17. May 2024 · age 18

      Sharjah Challengers[9]

      Won

      First win in an international open

    18. Jun 2024 · age 18

      World Junior (U-20) Girls Championship, Gujarat[12]

      Won with 10/11 (nine wins, two draws)

      Third world title; fourth Indian World Junior Girls champion after Humpy, Harika and Soumya Swaminathan

    19. Sep 2024 · age 18

      45th Chess Olympiad, Budapest (women's event)[13]

      Team gold; 9.5 points, played every game; individual gold on board 3

      Olympiad champion as a team debutant

    20. Jul 2025 · age 19

      FIDE Women's World Cup 2025, Batumi[14]

      Won; beat Koneru Humpy 1.5-0.5 in rapid tiebreaks after two classical draws, having knocked out Zhu Jiner, Harika Dronavalli and Tan Zhongyi

      GM title awarded directly, with no GM norms; qualified for the 2026 Women's Candidates

    Coaches and trainers

    5 people are named in published sources as a coach, trainer, second or mentor, in order. Players rarely list everyone who helped them, so this is what's on the record, not a complete count.

    1. Rahul Joshi[3]first coach (Anand Chess Academy, Nagpur); died 2020; she dedicated her GM title to him · from age 4 (c. 2009/10) until December 2013
    2. Anup Deshmukh[5]early mentor; IM from Nagpur · early career (years not stated)
    3. R.B. Ramesh (Chess Gurukul, Chennai)[2]trainer / academy · 2017 (her academy when she won the World Cadet U-12 title)
    4. Srinath Narayanan[15]'formative coach'; first met her as coach of India's World U-16 Olympiad team · c. 2016/2018 to 2020 (see conflicts)
    5. Abhijit Kunte[13]captain of India's women's team (a team role, not her personal coach) · September 2024 (45th Chess Olympiad, Budapest)

    Records, as they stood

    • First Indian to win the Women's World Cup, and first Indian to reach its final (as of 2025-07-28)[16]
    • Youngest ever to win the FIDE Women's World Cup (as of 2025-07-28)[5]
    • 44th woman and 88th Indian to become a grandmaster; fourth Indian woman GM (as of 2025-07-28)[16]
    • Seventh woman to earn the GM title as a teenager (Wikipedia, citing Chess.com) (as of 2025-07 (as stated on Wikipedia, Oct 2026))[1]
    • One of very few players to earn the GM title by winning a major FIDE event rather than with norms (as of 2025-07-28)[14]
    • 12th Indian woman to become an International Master, at 17 (as of 2023-05)[10]

    Since the title: career highlights

    • Jul 2025FIDE Women's World Cup champion 2025, which brought the GM title[14]
    • 2026Played the 2026 Women's Candidates: shared the lead after 8 rounds, finished 7th with 5.5/14[1]
    • Sep 2024Chess Olympiad 2024: team gold and individual gold on board 3[13]
    • Jun 2024World Junior (U-20) Girls Champion 2024[12]
    • Sep 202646th Chess Olympiad 2026 (Samarkand): team bronze, individual silver on board 3[1]
    • Oct 2026Peak rating 2510 (April 2026); FIDE standard rating 2488 in October 2026[1]
    • Oct 2026FIDE profile, Oct 2026: standard 2488, rapid 2400, blitz 2345. The profile shows only open-list ranks: world no. 663 and India no. 54 among active players[7]

    Checked on 2026-10-22. Ratings and rankings change every month.

    Where sources disagree

    We show both versions instead of picking one quietly.

    • How they learned chess
      • Put into a chess class at a sports academy at four, because she was too short for badminton[2]
      • Started chess as a hobby with her father (The Hitavada, 2020)[17]
    • WIM title age
      • 12 (matches FIDE: Presidential Board, July 2018)[3]
      • 14 (The Hitavada, 2020)[17]
    • WGM number in India
      • 22nd (ChessBase India)[8]
      • 21st (AICF, via The Bridge)[18]
    • Women's World Cup 2025 seeding
      • 15th seed (also Wikipedia)[19]
      • 18th (The Hindu; the Indian Express calls her world No. 18, which may be her rank and not her seed)[20]
    • World Junior 2024 venue
      • Gandhinagar (also The Federal)[12]
      • Ahmedabad (The Hindu)[20]
    • Srinath Narayanan: when the coaching began
      • First met in 2016[15]
      • Coaching began around 2018 (same article)[15]
    • First world youth medal / 'first World Championship'
      • World Youth bronze in 2015[5]
      • Calls 2016 her 'first World Championship', though she won the World U-10 in 2014 (The Hindu, Hitavada)[5]

    Every grandmaster started with a first tournament

    How long the road usually takes, from first moves to the title, is in our study of how long it takes to become a grandmaster. For a child starting out, here's how to get a FIDE rating in India.

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    Quick answers

    How did Divya Deshmukh become a grandmaster?

    By winning the FIDE Women's World Cup in Batumi on 28 July 2025, which carries the grandmaster title. She had no GM norms before it. She was 19.

    Who was Divya Deshmukh's first coach?

    Rahul Joshi, who ran the chess class at the Nagpur academy where she started at four. She dedicated her grandmaster title to him.

    How many women grandmasters does India have?

    Divya became India's fourth woman grandmaster in 2025, after Koneru Humpy (2002), Dronavalli Harika (2011) and R Vaishali (2023).

    More of India's greats

    Sources

    Every fact above links to the page it came from. We read each page and copied the sentence that says it; the quote is shown here. Checked on 2026-10-22.

    1. [1]en.wikipedia.org"Deshmukh was born on 9 December 2005 in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. [ 5 ] Her parents Namrata and Jitendra Deshmukh are both doctors."
    2. [2]thehindu.com"As a four-year-old, Divya Deshmukh wanted to play badminton at a sports academy in Nagpur, just like her elder sister. But as she was not tall enough to play the sport, her parents shifted her to the chess class being held one floor below."
    3. [3]chessbase.in"Divya's parents spoke to ChessBase India. They said, "It was Joshi sir with whom Divya started chess. She was with him until December 2013."
    4. [4]indianexpress.com"Divya winning the Women’s World Cup also makes her eligible to be India’s fourth woman to become a grandmaster, which is significant because before the event started, she had none of the three norms required for it."
    5. [5]chessbase.in"Anup Deshmukh is a respected IM from Nagpur. He was one of Divya's early mentors. “He has always been a guiding support in my career,” she says."
    6. [6]aicf.in"Divya Deshmukh recovered from an early loss to Chinnam Vyshnavi and won by a comfortable one point margin. Divya had previously won the National Under-7 girls’ championship and the Asian Under-8 Girls’ championship."
    7. [7]ratings.fide.com"Woman International Master 2nd quarter Presidential Board Meeting 2018, July 8-11, Bucharest, ROU YES"
    8. [8]chessbase.in"Divya scored her first WGM and IM-norm at Velammal-AICF International WGM Round Robin. She scored 8.0/11 to win the tournament"
    9. [9]thefederal.com"She was also a member of the Indian team, which won (jointly with Russia) in the 2020 Online Chess Olympiad. Being in the same team as five-time World champion Viswanathan Anand must have been a memorable experience for the then 14-year-old."
    10. [10]chessbase.in"The reigning two-time National Women's champion, WGM Divya Deshmukh scored her final IM-norm on Thursday 11th May at Baku Open 2023."
    11. [11]chessbase.in"IM Divya Deshmukh drew against WIM Xeniya Balabayeva (KAZ) in the final round to clinch the Gold at Asian Continental Women 2023. Divya scored an unbeaten 7.5/9 and finished a full point ahead of the competition."
    12. [12]timesofindia.indiatimes.com"With this triumph, Nagpur’s International Master (IM) Divya Deshmukh won her third world title. She had earlier clinched the world title in the U-10 and U-12 categories in 2014 and 2017 respectively."
    13. [13]fide.com"18-year-old Divya Deshmukh, a new addition to the team, was unstoppable throughout the event. She played all games, scored 9.5 points, and secured the crucial victory in the final match. Individual gold on board three is a well-deserved award for her."
    14. [14]fide.com"With this triumph, Divya not only secures the USD 50,000 first prize, but also automatically earns the Grandmaster (GM) title—the highest title in chess."
    15. [15]outlookindia.com"Srinath, who coached the Nagpur teenager till 2020, says he understood that she was talented as early as in 2018."
    16. [16]chess.com"She is the first Indian player to win the Women's World Cup and also the first Indian player to even reach the Final."
    17. [17]thehitavada.com"Divya, too, started playing chess as a hobby with her father and gradually developed intererst only to make it her passion."
    18. [18]thebridge.in"The All-India Chess Federation (AICF) congratulated Deshmukh on becoming a WGM, the country's 21st."
    19. [19]timesofindia.indiatimes.com"Entering the tournament as the 15th seed, Divya’s incredible run saw her overcome some of the world's strongest players"
    20. [20]thehindu.com"While Humpy, the reigning World rapid chess champion, is ranked World No. 5, Divya is seeded only 18th."