India is a country of 1.2 billion people, and though the percentage of those people in the middle and upper classes is small, it's growing quickly. Now, a new group of art-minded investors is trying to lure some of that wealth toward the art market in India, via an Internet-based art fair, the India Art Collective. While many of India's newly wealthy are comfortable with technology, they may not be comfortable with the mores of the established art world, making the transparency and relative anonymity of the Internet model an attractive way to begin to grow India's art collecting base. 

The new fair boasts 41 galleries, 200 artists, and over 800 works of art — including work from revered Indian artists such as M.F. Husain and S.H. Raza, as well as contemporary Indian superstars Anish Kapoor and Anita Dube — all to be sold from November 19 to 26 on the IAC Web site. While other online fairs have proved less than successful, ARTINFO talked offers some reasons why this one just might prosper.

PRECEDENT

"The whole model is based on the simplicity and the reach of the Internet in India," said Sapna Kar, a co-founder and director of the IAC. 

That idea, while perhaps novel in many corners of the globe, is already working for Saffronart, which was launched by collectors Minal and Dinesh Vazirani in India over a decade ago, and now counts itself among the world's most successful online-only auction houses. In 2010 Arpita Singh's "Wish Dream" sold for $2.2 million. Saffronart's business model is so successful that Harvard Business School (the alma mater of its co-founders) has used it as a case study. 

"We started Saffronart with the premise in mind that you want to fuse technology along with the art and create something online that will allow people to have reference points, to have images, have prices, have information, and make the whole process of buying online easier," said Saffronart's Dinesh Vazirani in an interview with ARTINFO. That, according to Kar, is what the IAC aims to do as well. 

TRANSPARENCY

The fair has been adapted for an online platform in ways that other attempts, such as the VIP Art Fair launched earlier this year in New York, were not. Many of the previous attempts, Kar pointed out, have not changed the in-person art fair paradigm enough make the Internet platform more attractive than a physical fair. About the VIP Fair specifically, Kar said that, "Creating a world event online and getting 138 galleries to participate is reasonably noteworthy as an effort." However, she added, "I think what they did was they tried to model it on the in-person art fair." 

The IAC, on the other hand, is changing things up. Transactions will be more transparent. Instead of having to get in contact with a gallery by telephone to find out the price of a work, all prices will be divulged on the site — a major change from the typical fair model, where galleries typically don't list prices upfront. This may encourage buyers who are on a budget. There is no embarrassment in not being able to afford a work, because the collector doesn't even have to ask. Work will even be grouped into three different parts of the site, arranged by budget.

"Essentially the entire fair looks like three exhibition halls. The first exhibition hall features work which is below $12,000. The second hall features work which is billed between $12,000 and $45,000. The third includes work above $45,000. So it enables a buyer to browse a fair based on the budget they are comfortable with," said Kar.

Holding an art fair online will allow the IAC to expand its geographic reach, reaching both dispersed collectors within the country and the Indian diaspora beyond. Only a fraction of India's population lives within the metro areas where the vast majority of Indian galleries are located, and where the country's major art fairs take place (mainly in New Delhi and Mumbai). While there is still very much a place for physical fairs, said Kar, "I think this is a complimentary model that is going to help us expand the market. We need to encourage a lot of new collectors — collectors who may not necessarily be based in the two prime metros where most of the galleries are."

There are also a lot of collectors that live beyond India's border. One of the reasons that Kar listed for starting this fair online is the ease of access for the Indian diaspora. "A lot of Indian art is being collected by people of Indian origin, who are not necessarily based in India — which is, again, a huge feature of this art fair," she noted. Dinesh Vazirani echoed that sentiment. While only 60 percent of buyers on Saffronart are buying from within India, 85 percent of Saffronart's customer's are of Indian origin, meaning about 15 percent are Indians living in other parts of the world: London, New York, Singapore, and Hong Kong are the most common. 

"In this kind of fair, whether you are in Mumbai or Manhattan, you can just click the artworks you like — which have been placed by over 40 leading galleries in this case — and take home the artwork of your choice," noted Kar.

TECHNOLOGY

India, in some ways, is the perfect place for an online art fair to succeed. It is growing rapidly, with much of its emerging middle class well-versed in and comfortable with technology. India has about 100 million Internet users today, and that number is expected to jump three-fold by 2015, according to Kar (a 2010 report by the Boston Consulting Group on Internet usage in BRICI countries puts the projected number at 240 million by 2015). "All of these people are upwardly mobile and very, very comfortable with technology. They are using it in every aspect of their lives," she said. Why not use it to collect art?