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India and the city of Mumbai are fast becoming key fashion hotspots.

The country’s industry is projected to reach $115-125bn (£91-£99bn) by 2025.

And in March last year, a landmark Dior show was held at the iconic Gateway of India - a Mumbai landmark - confirming the city’s status as an emerging fashion capital.

Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri told she wanted to “celebrate and showcase the incredible knowledge India offers to the international world of fashion” with the show.

Along with Delhi, Mumbai is home to many of the country's top designers, like .

The city is also bursting with luxury thanks to the many millionaires and billionaires that live there. But alongside the wealth, are slums where extreme poverty exists in plain sight.

The three-part ���˿��� series Streets of Gold: Mumbai dives into the bustling city - including some of the models who live and work in the fashion centre.

Shimona Nath and Chandani Purohit, both 22, left their family homes to pursue modelling careers in Mumbai.

For Shimona, a career in modelling was an easy choice. Her mother, a former model, prepared her for a career in the industry since she was a teenager.

“I made a move to Delhi first, where I worked for three years mostly in print for the top Indian designers,” she says.

“After that, I felt like I had covered a lot of the market in Delhi, and I wanted more, so I decided to move to Mumbai.”

She has now been modelling for five years.

Chandani, however, says she was “clueless” when she first started out in 2021.

She had no idea about the industry, she says, “but my agency scouted me through my Instagram”.

Unlike Shimona, her family were not initially on board with her chosen career.

“My parents are traditional,” she says. “They say, ‘don’t do this, don’t do that.’ But now, they know the way I live and the certain clothes I wear.”

Chandani is now one of the models taking part in Mumbai fashion week.

For all of the glamour and excitement fashion has brought them, there are downsides, the both agree.

Chandani says pay can often be slow and sometimes it isn’t enough for the lifestyle she wants for herself.

“​​Living away from home and in different cities to our families, trying to run entire houses by ourselves and stuff like that can be difficult,” she says.

But overall she’s thrilled to work in fashion.

In recent years, the Fashion Design Council of India has held model auditions to look for more diverse faces.

For actress, presenter and model Aradhana Nayar, preserving your self-confidence and motivation is the key to surviving the psychological rollercoaster of Mumbai’s tough fashion and entertainment industries.

“I think that is the biggest struggle here because if you lose that, then you lose everything,” she says. “That's just the name of the game here.”

For every win she’s had - landing a spot on a daytime series and becoming a regular presenter at Mumbai’s racecourse, for example - she’s had even more rejections.

And Nisha JamVwal, a columnist and luxury brand consultant, adds: “So long as you have vision and a dream, you can come here, work hard and it happens.”

Crucially, there’s an undeniable draw to Mumbai, she says.

“It’s a city that never sleeps.”

You can keep up with each of the Mumbai residents by watching Streets of Gold: Mumbai on ���˿��� iPlayer.