The Next Generation
Hyderabad · Table tennis, and the business of making art ordinary
He captained the University of Delhi at table tennis for two seasons, having come up through the Telangana circuit and played at national level. He now runs the part of Kalakriti India whose whole purpose is to put original art within reach of people who do not think of themselves as collectors.
2018–2020
He came up through the Telangana table-tennis circuit and went on to play at national level — the years of early mornings, of travelling to tournaments, of a sport in which a point turns on a fraction of a second and a match turns on the willingness to keep starting again.
At St Stephen’s College he kept playing, and from 2018 to 2020 he captained the University of Delhi side — two full seasons leading a team drawn from across a university of some ninety colleges.
Table tennis is an individual sport until somebody gives you a team, at which point it stops being about your own game at all.
That is the part of a captaincy that does not show in a results table: the responsibility for other people’s preparation and other people’s nerve, for who plays which rubber, and for the mood in a room between matches. It is a young person’s first real experience of being answerable for something larger than their own performance.
Kalakriti India
He leads ArtCafe and Kalakriti India’s affordable-art and retail division — the arm of the group founded on the idea that original art should not be the preserve of galleries and collectors, but should hang in ordinary homes and offices.
It is a harder proposition than a gallery. A gallery persuades a small number of people to spend a great deal; this asks a great many people to spend a little, without letting the quality or the authenticity slip. Every piece carries a certificate from the artist or the archive. Designers, product designers and technical staff make each item to standard.
One generation built a private archive of ten thousand maps. The next is working out how to get a good print onto a wall in a two-bedroom flat.
Those are not opposite instincts. They are the same instinct at different scales — the belief that what is beautiful and well-made should be seen, and that access is a thing you have to actively build rather than assume.
Alongside this he is a director of the Maheshwari Connect Forum, a Hyderabad-registered non-profit established in 2021, which links members of the Maheshwari community across the city and beyond.
Founded 2011
Original paintings, vintage reproductions and art-led objects, for collectors, interior designers, corporate clients and gift buyers alike.
artcafe.in ↗The Group
The gallery, the archives, ArtCafe and the Krishnakriti Foundation — the family’s cultural enterprise in Hyderabad.
Kalakriti India →The Chapter Before
Founder of Kalakriti India and the Kalakriti Archives, and of the festival the city receives free each January.
The profile →Continue
Five Generations
From Gullar in Nagaur to the Deccan, and the branches the family put down in Gulbarga, Latur and Hyderabad.
The people →1860s to Today
Where this generation stands in a hundred and sixty-five years in the Deccan.
The timeline →1956 · 2003 · 2017
The three instruments of giving the family has built, and what they continue to fund.
The trusts →