But these days the entertainment sector is overreaching itself to find new ways to expand and diversify.

For a start, sales of Indian films into international markets is becoming more sophisticated.

Leading studio groups such as Eros, UTV and Indian Film Co-TV18 operate their own global releasing operations with branch offices typically in the U.S., U.K., Middle East and Africa.

In other territories with smaller Indian populations, they often work with a low number of specialist distribs, but they increasingly attend film and TV markets where they strike license deals that would be familiar to IFTA members.

"There is burgeoning interest in Bollywood films in non-Asian (and) many European territories, but we don't represent core content," says Hemant Bhardwaj, senior VP of international operations at TV18.

In Germany, France, Benelux and Poland, companies such as Rapid Eye, T-Saleh and Gutek are presenting more and more Bollywood pics to theatrical auds. Those companies are Asian and arthouse specialists, but don't limit themselves to Bollywood only.

In other territories -- including Romania and the Baltic states -- where there are fewer theaters and the P&A costs for minority fare make Bollywood releases prohibitive, the market is predominantly TV and video.

Here, too, sophistication is increasing.

"In India we created something of a revolution," says Bhardwaj, "when we stopped selling all TV rights as a bundle and started to sell different rights to different channels and control the number of telecasts and the ancillaries. Now our international team is doing the same. We'll sell separately or the package, but now we understand the value of each window."

Within India, the Bollywood genre's ubiquity has been extended through technology. Mainstream films are now mobile -- paid for on the panoply of movie channels or available via broadband Internet for download, rental or streaming.