In the build-up to the Saatchi Gallery's new exhibition, The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today, which opens on January 29, there has been much hopeful talk about how it will revive the fortunes of the market for contemporary Indian art.

This is a market that, for a select band of artists, saw one of the most dramatic rises of all during the art boom of 2006 to 2008. According to ArtTactic, a company that monitors the progress of emerging markets, average prices for contemporary Indian art at auction rose by 140 per cent between March 2006 and September 2008. But between September 2008 and September 2009, they fell by 75 per cent.

While the older generations of modern artists held the fort, demand for younger contemporary artists - a generation on which Saatchi has focused - spiralled downwards. In New York, consignments for sale were so thin last year that Sotheby's combined modern and contemporary Indian art with South-East Asian antiquities and miniatures to boost their catalogues. Global sales of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie's rose from $650,000 (£403,000) in 2000 to $45million in 2008, but fell back to approximately $12.5million last year.

So what has been the effect on Saatchi's investment? For one thing, this is a collection that was largely formed two years ago - just before the boom peaked, but without the advantage of buying in a downturn. It is unlikely that the top prices paid at auction would be recovered at this moment. Atul Dodiya's decorative painting Woman of Kabul (2001) cost $156,000 when it was bought in May 2008 - not a record, but above the high estimate. However, since September 2008, hardly any of the more expensive works by Dodiya offered at auction have sold.

In the same sale, Saatchi bought a painting of kitchen pots by India's most highly rated young artist, Subodh Gupta, for a triple estimate and record $646,000. In the months that followed, several Gupta paintings and sculptures broke the $1million mark at auction. Sellers looking to cash in during the autumn of 2008, though, were disappointed when the majority of his works at auction went unsold.

In contrast, where he bought new work direct from galleries in the early stages of boom, and was able to negotiate prices, Saatchi appears to be in profit. In 2007, for instance, he bought a set of three photographic collages by Pakistani artist Rashid Rana. Made up of tiny pornographic photographs, the collages were arranged to look from a distance like a veil, a symbol of modesty. The price for the set, direct from Rana's gallery, was about $20,000. In June last year, in spite of recessionary conditions, another example from the edition of 20 sold for £61,000 at Sotheby's.

Gupta's bronze sculpture UFO was bought in 2007 from the Bodhi Gallery for about $160,000, but would be priced at double that amount since the artist signed up with international heavyweight dealers Hauser & Wirth.

Then there is TV Santhosh, whose paintings Saatchi again purchased direct from the artist's gallery in 2007. Costing about £32,000 each, similar works became the subject of intense speculation, rising to 10 times that amount at auction during the next 18 months. But, like so much contemporary Indian art, prices then crashed down to earth.

However, Saatchi would still probably double his money if he sold those paintings at auction now, says Conor Macklin, a director of the Grosvenor Vadehra Gallery, which works with Santhosh.

For a less established artist, such as Huma Mulji, whose taxidermy camel in a trunk, Arabian Delight, was bought at the Dubai Art Fair two years ago for $8,000, the exhibition itself will probably be the main spur to stardom, and its timing could be propitious. ArtTactic measures the confidence its subscribers have in the future of particular markets, and says that its confidence indicator for modern and contemporary Indian art, which had reached a high of 82 points in October 2007, fell to its lowest point of 20 in May 2009. However, its last reading, taken in November 2009, showed an uplift to 49 points.

In the interim, prices for the market leader, Subodh Gupta, have stabilised, though at slightly lower price levels, and for Atul Dodiya's next show to be held in March at the Vadehra Gallery in New Delhi, prices have been reduced to less than $100,000 each. That show, tellingly, has already sold out.