As India's Bollywood shifts, stars and snappers click

From riding pillion on zooming motorbikes to round-the-clock airport stakeouts, India's celebrity-hunting paparazzi photographers have gone from "outcasts" to becoming a key part of Bollywood's vast film industry machine.

- AFP

Times have changed for celebrity snapper Manav Manglani, who scored big at the wedding of Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty in 2009 by climbing a tree and perching on a branch for hours to spy over the venue's walls.

"We were considered outcasts," he said, describing the early days of his trade.

Fifteen years later, Manglani pushes streams of content to more than 6.5 million followers on Instagram.

"We are part of the system now", he said, commanding a squad of nearly 20 photographers who stake out popular gyms, chic cafes and luxury hotels, their mobile phones buzzing with tips.

The team has divided the megacity into coverage zones, including someone stationed at the airport full-time.

Mumbai-based Bollywood, the core of India's Hindi-language film industry, is the long-time heart of movie-making in the world's most populous nation and a major cultural export.

In celebrity-obsessed India, it can be a lucrative trade.

Bollywood began a century ago. But it was in the 1970s that film magazines began publishing "inside" industry gossip, said Mr Ram Kamal Mukherjee, a former editor-in-chief of Stardust magazine.