IPL 2024 Auction: Who is Mallika Sagar? Know about history-making auctioneer

The stage is set for the IPL 2024 Auction in Dubai on Tuesday (December 19) and history will be created in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with the IPL’s first-ever woman auctioneer – Mallika Sagar.

It has been confirmed by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) that Mallika, from Mumbai, will replace Hugh Edmeades as the IPL auctioneer. She will be the first woman auctioneer in IPL history.

Here is more about Mallika and her journey of being an auctioneer.

Mallika’s big-time cricket auction journey started in December 2022 when she conducted the Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2023 auction. She was also the auctioneer for the recently held WPL 2024 auction in Mumbai.

She has been conducting art auctions for more than 25 years. The 48-year-old has also conducted Pro Kabaddi League (PKL) auctions.

At the age of 26, Mallika became the first Indian woman auctioneer for British auction house Christie’s.

Mallika studied the history of art at Bryn Mawr College, a women’s liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, USA.

She moved back to India in 2000. She, along with others set up Pundole’s, a privately owned Mumbai-based auction house in 2011. “Mallika is a specialist in Modern and Contemporary Indian art and is Pundole’s auctioneer,” according to the company’s website.

“Mallika began her career at Christie’s and held the first sale of Modern Indian Art in New York in 2000 and was Christie’s first Indian auctioneer,” it added.

First auction

Mallika went to school in Mumbai till Class 10, and then spent 11th and 12th grades at a boarding school in Connecticut, which, according to her, “proved to be great fun and the perfect preparation for college”.

“I worked at Christie’s for two summers, in Mumbai and then New York. Christie’s offered me a job a few months after graduation,” Mallika was quoted as saying in a bulletin by Bryn Mawr College.

“I took my first auction in New York in December 2000, selling baseball memorabilia to a room full of men, who were more than a little shocked to see an Indian woman selling exclusively American male collectibles.

“I moved back to India at the end of 2000 to take over the India office. In 2004, I left Christie’s to spend a year with my mother, who was unwell. I started my own practice as an art consultant and did that for a few years, but my first love was always auctioneering.

“In 2011, I was asked by a respected member of the art fraternity to help auction a very important collection of paintings in India. He asked another ex-Christie’s colleague as well, and together we set up Pundole’s, holding our first auction in April 2011,” she added.

Dealing with the “unknown”

On being asked what part of an auction excites her, Mallika told the WPL website, “It is the unknown. You don't know what is going to happen. It is just the excitement of not knowing what is coming but doing your best for it.”

She added that the entire process of the auction is exciting. “It is the actual auctioneering process. The adrenaline rush in itself. That is what gives you the most excitement, and interacting with bidders and players. It gives me the most joy.”

On the challenges of a cricket auction, she said, “The most challenging part is you don't make a mistake with the numbers, because at the end of the day, you are trying to fulfil various things at the same time. You have to keep your numbers in order and do it with a big smile on your face, no matter what.”

Mallika said if she was not an auctioneer, she would have been an investigative journalist.

During an auction, she said there are a lot of things to balance, and she tries to get them right. “It is a bit of theatre, it is a bit of drama… and, there is never a dull moment,” she said.