Fund will invest in art from India

Neville Tuli is looking for $33.5 million to invest in what may be India’s hottest market: art.

Soaring prices for contemporary Indian works prompted the chairman of Mumbai-based Osian’s Connoisseurs of Art Ltd. to start the nation’s second art investment fund. Osian, with sale rooms in New Delhi and Mumbai, will start raising money on Monday, Tuli said in an interview. The minimum investment is $22,300 for three years, he said.

Days after the Mumbai stock exchange had its biggest weekly drop since 2001, a painting by Indian-born Francis Newton Souza sold at auction for a record $1.2 million. Prices of works by Indian artists such as Souza, Vasudeo S. Gaitonde, Tyeb Mehta and Maqbool Fida Husain are being driven up by a global surge in art investment, coupled with growth in Asia’s fourth-biggest economy that has swollen the ranks of the nation’s wealthy.