Invest in art and become a lakhpati

kolkata: 'kaun banega lakhpati?' all you need is rs 80,000, a dream in your eyes and a risk-taking fire in your belly. and voila! you can expect that amount to jump to rs 1 lakh after one year. surprised? during these acutely depressive times — as stocks, gold, real estate, bank fds and special schemes no longer remain lucrative options for the average investor — an unlikely alternative has been catapulted centrestage.long confined to the domains of the rich and the famous, investment in art paintings is now gaining momentum among the indian middle class. and how. first, the monetary side. with returns of anywhere between 20 to 50 percent annually, investment in art can beat depression any day, hands down. then of course, there is the aesthetic angle. says harish mehta, a middle-aged executive with a blue-chip psu, who has recently bought a new flat at salt lake, as it is, i had to buy some art objects to decorate my new house. in selecting a ganesh pyne or a laxman shrestha, i can add aesthetic value as well as keep them as collateral to be disposed of after a few years when their prices appreciate. he has a point. but there's yet another reason for this new found boom in indian art. says supriya banerjee, owner of gallerie 88, a city art gallery, with indian art gradually getting international exposure, the awareness levels in and outside the country are rising. this has led to an increase in the total market size as well as the market prices. concurs prakash kejriwal, the owner of chitrakoot, another city-based art gallery, owing to worldwide media publicity of some of our indian works, the best investment option today is the secondary art market which caters to the old masters like jamini roy and nandalal bose. kejriwal says that one can nowadays easily expect an annual return of over 50 per cent on masterpieces from the top-of-the-line artistes, provided one gets a good purchase price through, say, distress sales. but amidst the brouhaha, there's a catch. nine out of ten circulated works of art, on a gross average, of some of the biggest indian artists, are fakes. and the worst part, as a top art collector points out, is that unless you know your oranges from apples well enough, you can't distinguish an original work of art from its spurious counterpart. in order to circumvent the problem, the collector, who prefers not to be named, advises wannabe investors to start tracking art auctions, visit galleries and sit with art aesthetes for advice, as the first step. then come your bargaining skills and later, your marketing acumen in order to get reasonably good returns on your initial investments, he adds. it's not so easy becoming a lakhpati these days.