How Ratan Tata’s intervention helped Nihal Sarin’s career take off when he was 10

Tata’s imprint on chess is well known. Two of the world’s premier chess tournaments — the annual Tata Steel Masters tournaments in the Dutch village of Wijk aan Zee (called the Wimbledon of Chess) and the Tata Steel India event in Kolkata are backed by the conglomerate.

But what is little known is how the Tata Group played a role in the rise of Nihal, one of India’s top prodigies, who is on his way to become one of the world’s top chess players.

“In 2015, the Tata Group offered me sponsorship. And they didn’t ask for anything in return. It was really nice of them. It really meant a lot for my chess career. Chess is an extremely expensive sport when you factor in travel for events and such things,” Nihal Sarin told The Indian Express after the GCL clash between his team PBG Alaskan Knights and Triveni Continental Kings at the Friends House in London.

Nihal said it all started with a phone call to his father, Dr Sarin Abdulsalam, when the player was just 10 years old.

RIP Ratan Tata sir – thank you to you and everyone at @tatatrusts for that call to my father in 2015 that changed my life for the better. Truly sad day. pic.twitter.com/EyCK1MlKon

— Nihal Sarin (@NihalSarin) October 10, 2024

The story goes that after unprecedented success in 2013 and 2014, where Nihal won medals at the U-10 World Blitz Championship and the U-10 World Youth Chess Championship besides medals at the national and Asian meets, it started to become apparent to his father that chess was an expensive pursuit.

“Back then, we had to spend a lot of money to send Nihal to some events abroad because organisers would sometimes only send one ticket. While a ticket was issued for Nihal, there was no ticket for the accompanying person. And he was barely 10, so I couldn’t have sent him there alone,” recalled Sarin. “Besides travelling, there was also the coaching costs. So it was taking a huge toll on finances. We were searching for sponsors, but it was difficult.”

After all, Nihal was not yet an International Master back then. This led Sarin to make one of the toughest decisions he’s had to make: to reduce Nihal’s participation in chess tournaments internationally and only send him to events that he could afford to pay for from his own pocket.

“It was a painful decision, but it couldn’t go on like that,” Sarin told The Indian Express ruefully.

But fate intervened, in the form of a magazine journalist who wanted to interview the young Nihal and his family.

“Usually I’m very diplomatic, but in that interview I said what the situation was,” Sarin said.

That interview had an instant impact. Within a couple of days of the article getting published, he had an email from Bollywood actor Naseeruddin Shah, who wanted to help the family out. Sarin replied, requesting him to introduce them to some sponsors. The actor warned the father against picking any sponsors that came their way because they would demand “their pound of flesh” in return for funding.

“He asked me to name the tournaments I was planning to send Nihal for in the coming months, and that he would help us find sponsors for two or three tournaments at a time,” Sarin said. “We exchanged a few emails. Then a week later, one night around 10:45 pm while I was half asleep, I got a phone call from an unknown number. Back then there were scam calls happening, so I ignored the call. The next morning again, at 6:45 or 7, I got a call from the same number. This time I answered and the person on the other side informed me that he was speaking on behalf of Ratan Tata.”

The conversation revolved around what tournaments Nihal was planning to play in and the costs involved for him to do so. The person on the other side also told Sarin that someone would come out to Thrissur to visit the family.

“But that never happened. Instead, after a few days, they had transferred the money into my account. It happened so quickly. Usually, we would have to spend a lot of time convincing sponsors how chess is and so on. But that support from Tatas was unconditional and for three years,” says Sarin.

While he doesn’t want to divulge how much the amount was, he does say it was in lakhs. But that support, when Nihal was not even an international master, was what steered his meteoric rise. Very soon Nihal had his first international master norm. The rest is history in the making.