The origin story is domestic and slightly comic. It was 2022, the fourth birthday of a girl in Jaipur, Rajasthan. Her elder sister Shreshtha — already a strong player chasing her first FIDE rating — was working through positions on a physical board. The four-year-old wanted to touch the pieces. She was, sensibly, told not to interrupt. So she went to her mother instead and asked to be taught. Within hours she was moving the pieces confidently. Within two months she had climbed multiple levels on online chess platforms. By the age of five she had won the Rajasthan State Under-7 Girls Championship.
What distinguishes Shreyanshi from the ordinary run of talented children is not speed of learning but refusal to draw. In 2025 alone she won the Rajasthan State Under-7 Girls Championship with 7/7, the Rajasthan State Under-9 Girls Championship with 7/7, the National Under-7 Girls Championship with 9/9, and the National Schools Under-7 Girls Championship with 9/9 — the last by a full two points over her nearest rival. Perfect scores are rare at any level; the field is competitive and a final-round draw is the normal way to seal a title. She kept playing for the win. ChessBase India marked the National Schools sweep with a special prize: a DVD by world champion Gukesh Dommaraju, whose own 9/9 at the same event in 2017 her result had echoed.
Her international breakthrough came at the 2025 Asian Schools Chess Championship in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Seeded fifth in the Girls Under-7 Rapid, she won her first six games — including victories over top seed Venera Zhakisheva and eventual bronze medallist Sod Delgersaikhan — lost the seventh, and took gold on tie-break. In the Classical section she was top seed, raced to a perfect 5/5, lost in round six to the eventual winner, then scored 2.5/3 across the closing rounds for silver. A bronze in Blitz, on 7/9, completed the set. She was the only Indian player at the championship to medal in all three formats.
The record is not one of uninterrupted ascent, and her coaches are candid about that. At the 2024 National Under-7 Girls Championship she stood at 7/7 as an unrated player in a field containing eight rated opponents, having just beaten a top seed rated above 1700 — then lost the final two rounds and finished fourth. At the 2025 FIDE World School Chess Championships, top-seeded, she lost three games and again finished fourth. Both results would flatter most children. Both fell short of what she is capable of, and both were treated as the real curriculum.
The repair work was psychological rather than technical. Since late 2023, aged five and a half, Shreyanshi has trained at Upstep Academy under coach Pankit Mota, rated 2148. "Shreyanshi is quite sharp," Mota has said. "Every class, we dive into the 'why' behind the concepts, derive useful lessons, and integrate psychological insights to accentuate the learning. She absorbs new ideas with remarkable speed. At the same time, Shreyanshi is a true fighter on the board, possessing an innate drive and determination." His mantra for her, delivered in Hindi, translates as: the best player doesn't win — the one who plays the best wins. It was designed to stop a small child over-respecting a rating number on the other side of the board.
Preparation for Mongolia included a detail that reveals the seriousness of the operation around her: for more than two months before the Asian Schools, her training sessions were moved to match the exact hours she would be playing in Ulaanbaatar, so that the time-zone shift would cost her nothing. Her parents, Dr Shimona Agarwal and Dr Sushil Kumar Jain, are physicians rather than chess players. When Shreyanshi was five her mother played one game with her every morning before school; her father woke at odd hours from India during the Asian Schools to help her warm up. A chessboard stays permanently set up in the house. She names Magnus Carlsen, Gukesh and Divya Deshmukh as her favourite players, studies their games, and — her coaches note approvingly — declines to worship them. Away from the board she watches cartoons, paints, plays cricket and does Wordle.
“Shreyanshi is quite sharp. Every class, we dive into the 'why' behind the concepts. She absorbs new ideas with remarkable speed. At the same time, Shreyanshi is a true fighter on the board, possessing an innate drive and determination.”— Pankit Mota, her coach at Upstep Academy
“The best player doesn't win — the one who plays the best wins.”— the mantra Pankit Mota taught her, in Hindi, for games against higher-rated opponents
| Person | Country | Milestone | Age / Stat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shreyanshi Jain | 🇮🇳 India | World Cadets gold at 7; four perfect-score titles in one year | Age 7 |
| Bodhana Sivanandan | 🏴 England | European women's champion and Olympiad board medallist as a child | Age 9 |
| Divya Deshmukh | 🇮🇳 India | World Junior Girls champion; Women's World Cup winner | Age 19 |
| Gukesh Dommaraju | 🇮🇳 India | 9/9 at the 2017 National Schools; youngest world chess champion | Age 18 |
Chess measures children more precisely than almost any other pursuit, and the measurement here is unusual. Winning a national championship at seven is remarkable; winning four titles in twelve months without conceding a single half-point is a different category of statement. It says the player is not merely ahead of her age group but operating at a level the age group cannot test.
The FIDE World Cadets gold matters for a second reason. Blitz solving strips chess down to calculation and pattern recognition under time pressure — no opponent psychology, no opening preparation to hide behind. A seven-year-old who becomes world champion in that discipline is being measured on raw processing speed, and the result held up against 437 players from 40 countries.
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