SaffronArt at 25: ‘It’s an exciting time’: Dinesh Vazirani on the new era of Indian art collecting | Mumbai news

Auction house SaffronArt, which marks its 25th anniversary this year, has been instrumental in reshaping the Indian art market. Founded by Minal and Dinesh Vazirani in 2000, it began as a digital-first platform—an unusual choice at a time when auctions were mostly live, and remote bidders participated via phone or representatives. “Back then, Indian art buyers were mostly NRIs,” recalls Dinesh Vazirani, CEO of SaffronArt. But much has changed. In 2024, the Indian art market stood at $174 million (approx. ₹1,450 crore), compared to a global public sales market of $19 billion ( ₹1.58 lakh crore). Online auctions are now standard, a shift SaffronArt helped pioneer.

Despite a 25% dip in the global art market—the lowest since 2020, according to the Art Basel and UBS Art Market Report—the Indian market is thriving. Twenty-six auction records for Indian artists have been broken in the past four months alone. Already, sales in 2025 have touched nearly half of last year’s total.

SaffronArt itself has posted an average 15% year-on-year growth since the pandemic. At its latest auction, held on April 2 and 3, all lots sold (a “white glove” result) and a global record was set for modernist Tyeb Mehta. His painting Trussed Bull fetched ₹61.8 crore, tying with Amrita Sher-Gil for the second-highest public sale price of an Indian artwork.

As collecting grows and speculators retreat, Vazirani told HT that the market is entering a more mature phase. “Collectors are better informed and more engaged now. It’s an exciting time,” he says. Read edited excerpts…

When the pandemic-induced lockdown hit, SaffronArt started small format auctions with no reserve prices, twice a week, to keep people’s interest going. The pandemic wiped out the last of the hesitation to buy luxury products online, but at the start of the pandemic, this was still an interesting idea as people may have also thought, now’s not the time to buy and sell art.

Actually, three weeks before they declared the lockdown, we had digitised all our data, stored everything on our servers, and moved our artworks to storage locations. So when the lockdown started, and everyone was afraid of what was going to happen, we decided to start these auctions. It did two things. One, it helped people to buy and sell works of art quickly. Second, the pandemic gave people the time to research and read. An educated collector base really matures the market because it takes out speculation. Also, it gave an opportunity to younger buyers to come in and bid, because online auctions are non-threatening, they’re anonymous. There’s no fear of walking into a room and raising your paddle.

Post pandemic, according to a recent report, the trend in the global art market is a slow-down in high-end art sales (above $10 million), a heightened activity and growth in lower-priced sales (sub-$5,000), as well as concentrated bidding. Does the Indian art market conform to or buck this, notwithstanding the vastly different price points? Does the Indian art market behave similar to the global art market dominated by buyers in the US, UK, France and China?

The Indian market is exactly the opposite. When you see a steep jump in a market, like a vertical jump which is what we’ve seen happen right now — March and April alone saw 50% of last year’s sales of Indian modern and contemporary art; $90 million to $174 million — we underestimate its longevity. Most people think that if it goes very high, it might slow down, but vertical markets last for years. That’s because a new crop of buyers come in when prices reach a certain threshold once there have been enough structural changes.

Such as?

By structural I mean that we are seeing collectors around the world, from the US to the Middle East and in India too, buying works to build private museums. This institutionalisation of art is significant, because museums don’t resell works, and those works go out of the market completely. That diminishes supply. In a situation where supply is limited and museum collections are strong top notch collections, new buyers have to fight to get the best works. And the modern art market is a finite one, as most of the artists are no more. After Covid, a new crop of buyers are coming in with research, advisors and substantial budgets. Indians have generated a lot of wealth since Covid. Thirdly, these same people are now buying big homes and there is a kind of social stigma if you don’t have the best art on your walls. It’s a judgment of taste, affluence, and wealth. So this is not a speculation market. It is fundamentally a very strong market.

One of the biggest markets in global art sales is China, but post Covid, the big issue is non-payment of lots according to data from the Chinese Auctioneers Association. Is this an issue that SaffronArt has had to face, and more generally speaking, if this is something that Indian auction houses face?

The reason why that is so is that the Chinese market was a very speculative market. The Indian market is not at this point. That’s the fundamental difference.

The highest sales that are being recorded in the Indian art market are at the $10-million mark [Gram Yatra, MF Husain’s 1952 painting sold for ₹118 crore or $13.7 million in March] but otherwise the highest point is usually around $1 million [in 2005 Tyeb Mehta’s Mahishasura became the first ever work by an Indian to sell for $1.6 million]. The highest point in the West is far higher. What will it take for us to reach there?

Something I said about a decade ago when top paintings — the best of the best — were selling at about a million and good works of the same artists were going gor $100,000 to $500,000 that when the benchmark changes, the increase will be five fold and great paintings will sell for over $5 million and good works of the artist will sell at a million. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. I’m sure at some point you will see Tayeb Mehta, VS Gaitonde and others sell for $10 million too.

According to this report, globally, the midsize segment is doing really well. Indian modern art is really within this segment then, isn’t it?

That’s a good point. Compared to the global market, the India market fits in that midsize segment. There’s no doubt [we will get to the high-end sales], but the difference is that the US has been a collecting market for much longer. At some point, when the next generation takes over, with a demise or with someone wanting to sell their collection or decides to put the works in a museum [that’s when we’ll see the rise]. The entire Indian art market is still very young.

In the case of high-end sales, art is not bought from income, it is bought from wealth.

Tell us the difference.

The difference is that with income, like a salary, you go buy what you like and what you want to see on your walls. So, people spend ₹5 lakh or 3 lakh or 10 lakh and aren’t thinking what will the value increase be. You’re not building a museum right now. But as values go higher, when you are spending ₹5 crore or ₹10 crore, or even ₹100 crore. You know that you have to think really hard about the work and why it’s important, so the freewheeling impulse is replaced.