"That's very easy," laughs Namita Sibal when asked how she manages both business and family. The 35-year-old mother of two, along with friend Manisha Gupta started indianartcollectors.com a Web site that acts as a platform between art collectors and artists/painters.
Her day begins at 6.30. After packing off her kids to school and husband to office ("husbands are like children too", she chuckles) by 9.30 she gets back to work. Two hours of web surfing later she goes to the gym for an hour.
By the time her children come back home at 2.30 pm she has almost done a good part of her job.
"It is such an easy business model and that's why I opted for it," she says about Indianartcollectors. In just three years this team of two has notched revenue of Rs 60 lakh just by helping get art collectors (buyers) and artists (sellers) together. They estimate to end the year 2008 with a revenue of Rs one crore says an emphatic Namita.
Here she discusses the story behind Indianartcollectors and how the business actually works with rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore.
The story behind Indianartcollectors
There was this thing called the Internet waiting for us to take advantage of.
Being collectors we wanted to meet collectors of Indian contemporary art from the other countries.
We thought why not post our works, collections on a Web site we would make ourselves. We have art collections, paintings that we wanted to post on the Web site and share it with other people interested in arts. The Indian collector community is so scattered and we wanted to share our art with them.
Suppose you have a beautiful painting and want others to comment on it, know (details like) where we bought it from for how much. This was a nice way of meeting different people.
The other thing that inspired us was the huge commissions charged by art galleries when we wanted to sell our collection. These art galleries charge as much as 25 to 30 per cent of the cost of the paintings. Suppose I bought a painting for Rs 100,000 and it appreciates by Rs 25,000-30,000 in a year. Now if I have to sell it then all my profits get eaten up by the commission we pay to the art galleries.
So we thought why not take advantage of the Internet. Put it online and let the best bidder buy art posted by artists from all over the country. The interesting thing is that we charge no commission at all from the buyer and that is how it started.
We got lots of collectors coming to our Web site, exchanging their art with each other, talking about which work they got from which gallery, which auction and such other discussions. Once we had a sizeable number of collectors on our Web site artists started approaching us asking us to sell their works through our Web site.
How does it work then?
We act as a platform between the buyer (art collector) and the seller (artist, painter). Once the buyer decides to buy a piece of art through our Web site we forward the same to the respective artist. The artist then ships the painting to the address given by the buyer.
In the meanwhile we collect the money from the buyer and keep it in our custody. Once the buyer confirms the safe and undamaged receipt of the painting we give the money to the artist less our commission.
So the artist is assured of the payment and the buyer is assured of her/his painting. If there is some damage to the painting during the transit then the artist pays for it. The artist also bears the shipping charges. So we are like a trust in which both the buyer and seller have faith.
We don't charge the buyer. We take a commission of 15 per cent from the artist. We also ensure that the artist is a genuine artist; we get them authentication certificates personally signed by an expert panel that comprises of known names. This helps when collectors want to re-sell it to others.
Prices are all inclusive and there are no hidden costs.
Challenges that you faced while changing the way art is bought-sold in India
Actually we haven't had much of a challenge. This is because we are a one-stop-shop for collectors to buy genuine piece of art and paintings and for artists to sell their art in an open transparent manner. We are not in competition with all those galleries that have their individual Web sites.
Our Web site gives a very empowering experience. The artists can reach a global audience by posting their work on Indianartcollectors.com. We have people from Greece and Rome buying Indian contemporary art.
Here again, if the artists sells her/his piece at say Rs 100,000 then s/he gets Rs 85,000 after paying a 15 per cent commission to us. The shipping charges, replacement of painting or returning money if the painting reaches the buyer in bad shape rests with the artists.
Profile of your artists
Though we have registered artists belonging to all age groups most of them are young. There is a bit of polarisation in the art world. There are extremely expensive artists and there are these young and emerging artists.
We have a range of artists on our Web site -- from the first-timers to those who have had many a successful exhibitions to their names. We have a very young artist called Durbanand Jana from Bengal who is still studying in college. There is another young artist Upasana Tripathi from Lucknow. Both are in the 22 to 23 age groups. While both of them are very young they had wonderful exhibitions recently and their art was much appreciated by collectors.
The minimum and the maximum amount an artist has fetched
The work of our artists range from Rs 7,000 to Rs 200,000 and we sell 30-40 paintings every month.
How do you zero in on a promising artist?
We have an art panel which comprises of famous art collectors. So it is the art panel that decides on which artists to feature on our Web site. We get as many as 10 to 15 applications every week out of which we short list only a couple.
Artists who are rejected can come back again after six months when their latest work is reviewed anew and a call is taken based on that. However, this does not mean that the artists whom we don't select are not good artists.
What is indianartcollectors' annual income?
Last year we earned Rs 60 lakh (Rs 6 million) in revenues and this year we are confident of notching a revenue of Rs one crore. Interestingly, we have no other costs besides Web site development.
How do you ensure that collectors/buyers get what they see on your Web site?
As you know art is a visual medium and hence the Internet as a medium is best suited to buy and sell art. They do quite a big image of paintings that they intend to buy. But sometimes collectors do call us and tell us that they want to see a bigger image. So we ask respective artists to send the collectors a bigger image.
Early childhood, college days, family background
My father was a senior officer in the railways (general manager, Northern Railway) and my mother was working with a political weekly called Mainstream. I went to Hindu College New Delhi for my BA in Economics. Following that, I completed the International Marketing programme (a one year diploma then and now an MA programme) from the Delhi School of Economics. I worked with CII for two years lobbying for industry groups. Then I shifted to the US. When I had kids I joined the masters programme in childhood education at Columbia University, NYC. This was a subject dear to my heart because I had small kids of my own.
The India-US-India journey
I got married (her husband is a computer scientist) and went to the US. Love for the country brought us back home. My husband was there for 16 years and I was there for six and half years. I came to India to for both my kids' delivery as we wanted them to be pure-bred Indian citizens.
My husband is a computer scientist and we came to India after he got a job as Mukesh Ambani's technology advisor. Now he is working with Qualcom as country head, technology.
I have two kids studying in Dhirubhai Ambani International School. Aged 8 and 9 they are studying in Class III and Class IV.
How do you manage both business and family?(Laughs) That's very easy. It is such an easy business model -- and that's why I opted for it.
After my husband leaves in the morning I start working on the Internet for about two hours looking at new applications, following up with artists if the paintings have reached their buyers and with buyers to get their payments in.
When my kids come back from school I sit with them for about two hours from about 4 to 6 pm preparing them for their tests. After they go out to play I am again on the Internet looking after indianartcollectors.com.
Basically I believe that my children should be able to study on their own. I am trying to build a strong foundation so that they will one day be able to study on their own, have a passion for learning and reading. I do a lot of math exercises with them and lots of creative writing.