Krishnan Sasikiran is an Indian chess grandmaster. He was one of Viswanathan Anand's seconds in the World Chess Championship 2013. He was born on the 7th of January 1981 at Chennai, the state capital of Tamilnadu. His father, Mr. Krishnan had himself remained an excellent Chess Player in his times, and had been the first Coach of the International Master Sundararajan Kidambi, a yet another commendable Chess Player from India. Receiving Chess in his genes from his father, Sasikiran picked up the game of Chess at a relatively later age and began playing the game when he was 9 years old. He studied at Modern Senior Secondary School at Nanganallur in Chennai. He won City of Pamplona international Chess tournament in December 2008 by an impressive one point margin. He won the Gold medal in the Asian Games 2006 and Tamil Nadu government gave him a cash prize of INR 20 lakhs. 

His international debut was in the year 1995 against Tomas Oral of Czech Republic. However he lost the game after 31 moves. He got the Under 18 title in the Commonwealth Games. He has also won the British Under-21 Chess Championship two times and represented Indian National Chess team at the Elista Chess Olympiad 1998. He won the Asian Junior Chess Championship in 1999. He got third place at Benasque Open Chess Tournament 1998. The year 2000 was the golden year for him as he got the Pentamedia Category XI Grand Master Tournament at Chennai. He earned second norm for the Grand Master title at Asian Chess Championship at Udaipur and third norm at the Goodricke International Open Chess Tournament at Kolkata. He became the International Grand Master at the age of 19. He was given Arjuna Award by Government of India in the year 2002.