Harika Dronavalli

Harika Dronavalli (born 12 January 1991) is an Indian chess grandmaster. She has won three bronze medals in the Women's World Chess Championship, in 2012, 2015 and 2017. Dronavalli was honored with the Arjuna Award for the year 2007–08 by the government of India. In 2016, she won the FIDE Women's Grand Prix event at Chengdu, China and rose up from world no. 11 to world no. 5 in FIDE women's ranking. Vladimir Kramnik, Judit Polgar and Viswanathan Anand are her chess inspirations. In 2019, she was awarded the Padma Shri for her contributions towards the field of sports.
Early life.
Dronavalli was born to Mr. Ramesh and Mrs. Swarna Dronavalli on 12 January 1991 in Guntur where she attended Sri Venkateswara Bala Kuteer Her father, Ramesh, works as a deputy executive engineer at a Panchayat Raj subdivision in Mangalagiri. She took keen interest in chess at a very small age. She won a medal in under-9 national championship. She followed it up with a silver medal in world youth chess championship for under-10 girls. That's when she approached her coach NVS Ramaraju, who refined her game. She became the second Indian woman to become a grandmaster, after Humpy Koneru.
She married in August 2018.