Duolingo India has rolled out a campaign featuring chess grandmaster R. Praggnanandhaa to promote the platform's latest offering: a full-fledged chess course.

Conceptualised by Talented and produced by Potli Baba, the campaign reframes chess not as a niche ‘boardgame’ but as a serious sport with star-making potential.

The film leans into self-aware humour and pop cultural insights to make a larger point, that learning chess, much like learning a new language, need not feel intimidating or elitist. The ad positions the game as a legitimate sport, while highlighting that learning, even for something as complex as chess, can be accessible and fun through the platform. 

The film unfolds as a deadpan mock interview on a fictional talent show titled Bharat’s Got Blatant. The interviewer’s casual dismissal of chess, reducing it to a mere ‘boardgame’ and questioning its ability to produce real ‘sportstars’sets the stage for the central joke. What follows is a rapid-fire montage that completely dismantles this perception, displaying the scale of Praggnanandhaa’s stardom post his achievements: fans chasing autographs, youngsters sporting Pragg-inspired haircuts and tattoos, parents naming newborns after him, glossy photoshoots, a video game commissioned in his honour, and even his poster lighting up Times Square. The humour peaks when the interviewer casually remarks that with such facilities he too could have been a grandmaster at 18, only to be gently corrected by Pragg: “By 12.”

 

 

 

 

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What we think about it: Praggnanandhaa's understated personality contrasts sharply with the frenzy around him, reinforcing the credibility of chess as a discipline while keeping the tone grounded. By exaggerating the interviewer’s ignorance, the film mirrors a common societal tendency to undervalue chess compared to more popular mainstream sports, making the payoff both funny and pointed.