In comparison to the online portal Saffronart.com and international auction houses Christie’s and Sotheby’s, Osian’s strength has always been the Indian domestic buyer, for whom the Modern masters is what we sell the best. “Since Saffron sells through the internet, their huge corpus of buyers are NRIs, for Christie’s and Sotheby’s 60 to 70 per cent of their clientele are foreign investors whose focus is more on avant grade contemporary artists,” explains Tuli, who believes that such differentiation in client bases is important. 

Institutional buyers, like banks and their clients bring greater credibility. “When a corporate firm invests its money in art or suggests to its clients that this is a good place to invest, it adds a financial dimension to what was considered an aesthetic realm. Though right now the emphasis is on the economic aspect of art, slowly it will shift to a more critical and knowledge-based review of art,” says Tuli, about the current success of the auctions.