Working with over 40 Indian museums, Varaha Heritage has recreated more than 2,000 heritage masterpieces, bringing pieces once locked behind glass into homes in India and around the world.
Varaha Heritage is the museum-authenticated replica maker in the country, and it has just crossed a defining milestone: more than three thousand exact, museum-certified replicas of sculptures older than a millennium, bringing pieces once locked behind museum glass into Indian homes. In the six years since it was founded, the company has made museum-grade replicas of more than three thousand objects, drawing on documentation from over forty museums, working directly with more than eight museums and indirectly with over twenty other heritage collections. Its replicas travel in two directions: some go to other museums, since not every museum can hold the original of every object it would like to show; others increasingly go into people’s homes.
A Heritage Out of Reach
India has never been short of history. What it has lacked is access to it. The country’s finest sculpture is concentrated in a handful of museums in a handful of cities, or in temples that demand a long journey and, often, some knowledge of what one is looking at. Outside those places, most people meet their heritage in textbooks, as flattened, captioned photographs. For a young Indian in a small town, the distance between curiosity and the object itself can run to hundreds of kilometers.
Hitesh Kumar, Varaha Heritage’s founder, came to the problem as a museum designer. “Museums have to be far more than repositories,” he says. “They are the places for learning. They should be able to capture people’s sense of belonging, and their pride in a heritage we all share. And objects have always been at the heart of that emotional connection.” In his view, a museum with limited space and resources can only do as much to strengthen the very bond it exists to build.
“Our objective is not simply to recreate objects,” Kumar says. “It is to make the stories, craftsmanship and cultural significance behind these objects accessible to people who may never have the opportunity to experience the originals in a museum.”
Out of the Vault
The company did not begin by making things. For more than three years, Kumar and his co-founder, Hemkant Tripathi, built a 3D scanning and virtualization platform that lets people examine museum objects online. Their first major project brought a hundred objects out of a government safe deposit of archaeological material, where they had been kept out of public view. The team scanned and researched each object and published them on heritageverse.net. More than twenty-five thousand people have viewed them since.
The digital archive proved that there was an audience. It also showed the limits of the screen. The company’s answer was what it calls a physical–digital–physical approach: record the original object digitally, then use that record to put a faithful physical object back into someone’s hands. “Holding a replica of a museum object in your hands is one of the most remarkable connections you can build with a museum and heritage,” Kumar says. “But it needs a real commitment to keep the dignity of the object and its story intact. Only then is it a piece worth keeping.”
The Discipline of the Copy
A replica is not the original, and Varaha Heritage does not pretend otherwise. Its claim is narrower and harder to meet: fidelity. Tripathi built not only the company’s technology framework but also its workflows for making physical objects, and he set up the workshop and the processes by which they are produced. The aim is to carry over more than the outline of a piece: the depth of a carved fold of cloth, the wear on an inscription, the small irregularities that give away a human hand. Tripathi is wary of technology for its own sake. “Technology must enable better experiences,” he says. “It should never become a fog screen for the absence of a great story.”
Every replica is certified by the museum that owns the original. The certification does two jobs: it confirms that the replica is correct, and it records the museum’s participation in the project. Each piece also comes with a researched keeper’s card and a certificate of authenticity. The certificate also records provenance: which original the piece is copied from, where that original stands and what it meant to the people who made it.
That documentation is what separates the enterprise from the souvenir trade. A trinket commemorates a visit. A well-documented replica, sitting on a desk or a classroom shelf, invites a question and then answers it. Seeing an object sparks curiosity; living with one sustains it.
From the Margins to the Main Stage
On 17 September 2025, in Dhar district in western Madhya Pradesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived to lay the foundation stone of the PM MITRA Park, a textile park meant to anchor the region’s industrial future. Before the speeches, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav presented him with an idol of Nar Varaha , the boar avatar of Vishnu. In the Puranic telling, Varaha dives to the bottom of the cosmic ocean and raises the drowned earth on his tusks. The sculpture the idol was modelled on is more than a thousand years old; the idol handed across that stage was not. Varaha Heritage had recreated it surface by surface.
The Dhar handover was the most public of the company’s appearances, but not the first. Varaha Heritage curated the museum display at the exhibition for the PM Vishwakarma scheme, the central government’s programme for traditional artisans, which the prime minister inaugurated. It has also been exhibited at the International Museum Expo organized by the Ministry of Culture.
Its most ambitious venture so far is commercial. Launched last year, varahaheritage.com sells replicas and souvenirs, and the company describes it as renowned e-commerce platform of its kind authenticated by museums. “It connects people, objects, and stories,” Kumar says. “And the museums earn from it, so they become partners in the mission, not just lenders to it.”
The push to grow is led by the third co-founder, Ajay Arora. He spent his career scaling national consumer businesses for Bennett, Coleman & Co., Hindustan Times and Samsung, then left it to join the company. “I believed in the idea,” he says. “My job is to take Varaha from local impact to a global brand without losing the mission along the way. When you think of Indian heritage, I want you to think of Varaha.” He has also led the creation of new ways for people to encounter that heritage, including Varaha Walks and Varaha Originals, which take the company well beyond its original mandate.
The timing matters. Museums and archives across the country are experimenting with digital documentation and looking for ways to reach audiences who did not grow up visiting them. The question facing the sector is no longer whether heritage can be preserved. It is whether heritage can stay present in the lives of people who will never see it behind glass. Faithful reproduction is one answer, and with three thousand objects already made, Varaha Heritage has gone further than most in testing it.
The company’s name draws from the Varaha avatar of Vishnu, credited in Hindu tradition with recovering the earth rather than creating it anew. Varaha Heritage says its own work follows a similar principle: much of India’s heritage is not missing, but simply inaccessible, held in storerooms, safe deposits and distant sanctums. The company’s stated goal is to make more of it visible, one certified replica at a time. To explore Varaha Heritage’s museum-certified replicas, visit varahaheritage.com .
Source: Business Wire India
