Photo Source: TOI arrangement

AHMEDABAD: Gujarat’s Pragnika Vaka was recently crowned world champion in the under-7 girls’ category at the 2025 FIDE World School Championship held in Vrnjacka Banja, Serbia, from March 20-28. The girl from Surat scored a perfect nine out of nine points and was the only Indian to win the gold medal across all age categories.
Twenty-two students from India participated in the competition, which was held across six categories (U-7, U-9, U-11, U-13, U-15, U-17). Apart from Pragnika’s gold, India won two silver medals — in the U-7 open and U-11 girls’ categories. Bijesh Divi bagged a silver in U-11 girls’ category while Om Esh Gottumukala claimed silver in U-7 open category.
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“Pragnika developed an interest in playing chess by watching her elder sister Varenya play. Varenya is already an established chess player in Gujarat,” her father Ramanadh told TOI. “During Covid, she started watching her sister play chess and developed an interest in the game. That she has achieved international success within a year and a half of playing chess shows her calibre.”
Varenya has so far failed to achieve the success of her younger sister, which has surprised her father.
“Varenya emerged as district and then state champion in her age category. But success has eluded her at the national level. What’s surprising is that Pragnika won at the state level and was runner-up at the national level. Now, she has won gold in her first international tournament,” he said.
Asked if he was confident of Pragnika winning a gold in Serbia, Ramanadh said, “I was confident of a top-five finish as players from Serbia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey and other strong chess-playing countries were competing. She knew that if she won the eighth round, she would be champion. Her opponent in that round was Shreyanshi Jain from India, who is the U-7 girls’ national champion in 2025. After winning that contest in 22 moves, Pragnika ran to hug her coach.”
On how he taught his daughter to handle pressure at such a young age, Ramanadh said, “I used to take them regularly to Mumbai on Sundays and allowed them to play in the open category with boys also. This helped her overcome the fear of playing under pressure.”