For Mahek Nayak the road from competitive badminton to art and real estate has not been a straight one.

At 22, she has already competed in badminton at the national and international level, worked in real estate marketing, completed her MSc in Marketing at the University of Birmingham Dubai, and started building her own business in the art world.

Today, she is the founder of HEART – Artbeat of Today, an art collecting and consulting business focused on Indian modern and contemporary art. She is also a partner at Noma Longevity Residences, a real estate company preparing to launch Healthy Homes.

On the surface, badminton, art and real estate might seem like completely different worlds. For Mahek, they are connected by something much simpler: discipline, value and the ability to understand people.

Before she was thinking about art collectors and real estate markets, Mahek was competing on the badminton court.

She played at both the national and international level, an experience that taught her how to handle pressure, deal with setbacks and keep going after a bad result.

Those lessons have stayed with her.

Competitive sport taught her that progress does not happen after one good performance. You lose a point, reset and play the next one. You cannot spend the rest of the match thinking about what just happened.

That mindset would later become useful far away from the court.

While badminton remained an important part of her life, Mahek was also becoming increasingly interested in business, sales and markets.

That eventually led her to real estate.

The connection between real estate and art became clear during a summer school at the London School of Economics.

Mahek studied Real Estate Economics and Finance, learning how property is valued, financed and traded as an asset.

Then she started looking at art differently.

"I realized art follows the same logic. It has value, scarcity, provenance and a market, but most people don't approach it that way."

It was a turning point.

Mahek had grown up around Indian art. Her grandfather, Kanu Nayak, was an artist and art critic who studied at the JJ School of Art and later became a professor there. His collection eventually became the Kanu Art Trust.

But instead of simply continuing that family connection, Mahek began asking a different question.

If people can understand property through valuation, documentation and due diligence, why can't they approach art with the same confidence?

That question eventually became HEART.

HEART, or Artbeat of Today, is focused on Indian modern and contemporary art.

Mahek works across sales and collector advisory, while also working with auction houses and galleries. Her goal is not simply to sell artwork. She wants to make the process of collecting easier to understand.

For new collectors, the art market can be difficult to navigate.

Pricing is not always obvious. Provenance and authenticity matter. And much of the industry still depends on relationships and knowledge that can be difficult for someone outside the ecosystem to access.

Mahek wants to bring more clarity to that process.

Her experience in real estate shaped the way she thinks about it. Buyers are used to asking questions about valuation, documentation and due diligence before committing to a property.

She believes collectors should feel the same confidence when buying art.

"HEART helps today's collectors buy Indian art the way smart investors buy property: with knowledge, trust and long-term vision."

That is the idea behind the business.

Dubai has become an important part of Mahek's vision for HEART.

The city has attracted entrepreneurs, investors and global wealth, with many people already comfortable thinking about property, portfolios and alternative assets.

Mahek sees an opportunity to bring Indian art into that conversation.

Her ambition for HEART goes beyond Mumbai. She wants to build a bridge between India's art market and collectors in Dubai and the wider Gulf.

Mumbai brings the artists, galleries, auction houses and history. Dubai brings a growing community of global buyers who are increasingly interested in different kinds of assets.

For Mahek, those two markets make sense together.

Starting an art business at 22 comes with an obvious challenge: credibility.

The industry has established dealers, collectors and institutions that have spent years, sometimes decades, building relationships.

Mahek had to find her place in that environment while also completing a full-time master's degree.

"I was also building the business while completing a full-time master's, so every deal had to fit around deadlines and exams."

The experience taught her something she now considers fundamental to the art business: trust is the real currency.

Collectors do not buy simply because someone has a familiar name. They buy when they believe the person advising them is transparent about pricing, careful with provenance and consistent in their work.

At 22, Mahek could not rely on decades of reputation.

She had to build her own.

The business began to feel different once Mahek started seeing her work move through established parts of the market.

She says she has sold works through India's top three auction houses and leading galleries in Mumbai, working across both primary and secondary markets.

She has handled works by artists including Jamini Roy, Manjit Bawa, K.K. Hebbar and Satish Gujral. She has also developed working relationships with relationship managers at leading Indian and international auction houses.

But one moment stood out.

Seeing works she had placed successfully sell through major auction houses.

That was when HEART started feeling like more than an idea.

The important part was not simply that a work had sold. It was that collectors and institutions were beginning to trust her judgment.

For someone building in an established industry at 22, that validation mattered.

The connection between badminton and business becomes clearer when Mahek talks about pressure.

Competitive sport taught her to stay calm, read the other side and move on after losing a point.

Those same skills appear in sales and negotiations.

A buyer can change their mind. A negotiation can go nowhere. A deal can fall apart after days of work.

You still have to reset and move forward.

For Mahek, badminton was not just something she did before business. It became part of how she approaches business.

She once viewed art and business as two separate worlds, one driven by passion and the other by numbers.

Building HEART changed that.

She now sees that the strongest collectors can do both. They can genuinely love a piece of art while understanding its value.

HEART is not the only part of Mahek's professional life.

She is also a partner at Noma Longevity Residences, a real estate company preparing to launch Healthy Homes.

At first, art and real estate might seem like an unusual combination.

For Mahek, the connection is straightforward.

Both require an understanding of value. Both involve important decisions. And both depend heavily on trust.

They are also connected to the things people choose to own, preserve and build for the future.

Working across both industries gives Mahek a perspective that is unusual for someone her age.

She is not trying to choose between art and property.

She is building across both.

Over the next two to three years, Mahek wants HEART to become a go-to art advisory for collectors and investors across Dubai and the Gulf.

But the ambition is not only about building another art business.

She wants to make collecting more approachable for a younger generation that may be interested in art but does not know where to begin.

A stronger digital presence, education and easier access to the world of Indian art are all part of that vision.

At the same time, she is looking ahead to the launch of Healthy Homes with Noma Longevity Residences.

Her career is still taking shape, but the direction is becoming clearer.

Mahek grew up around Indian art, but she did not simply step into the family legacy.

She found her own way into it.

Badminton gave her discipline. Real estate taught her to think about value. Her education gave her a business lens. And her family's history gave her a connection to art that goes back three generations.

Now, through HEART, she is bringing those experiences together.

She started by competing for points on a badminton court. Today, she is building businesses where the score is harder to see, but the stakes are much bigger.