Mahesh Savani with some of the hundreds of brides he has helped.

When Vishva Vamja's father died seven years ago from diabetes-related complications, her world collapsed. Overnight, aged 19, she became the head of the household, supporting her mother and siblings at their tiny home in Gujarat, India.

"If there was one thing I never thought about, it was getting married. We only had the money I earned so how could my mother ever have paid for my wedding? I didn't even think about it," Vamja said.

As it turned out, she got married last December and it was a grand affair. Her dowry included gold jewellery, crockery, cutlery, cooking utensils, electric gadgets and a dozen saris. But Vamja did not pay a single rupee for any of this, nor for the wedding feast, the flowers, the lighting, or for the venue. "Mahesh Papa", as she calls him, spent some 400,000 rupees (NZ$8154) on the wedding.

GAYTRI STUDIO Mahesh Savani with bride Vilas in 2014.

"On my wedding day, I felt as though my father was still alive. That is how Mahesh Papa made me feel when he fulfilled the responsibility that was my father's but which he took on as his," she says.

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GAYTRI STUDIO A mass wedding for 151 brides and their relatives and friends in December 2014. A total of 100,000 people attended this event, arranged and paid for by businessman Mahesh Savani.

Mahesh Papa is Mahesh Savani, a 47-year-old Indian businessman who has arranged and financed the marriages of 472 fatherless women since 2008 when a close relative died just a week before his daughter's wedding and stepped in and looked after the arrangements.

"That's when I began to think of all the girls without fathers who needed someone to assume this responsibility and decided I would take this up," he said.

All he asks from the women who approach him is the father's death certificate to be sure that he is not being taken for a ride. Caste and religion are irrelevant.

GAYTRI STUDIO Mahesh Savani with brides during a wedding event in 2014.

The first 47 weddings were arranged as individual events. When this became tiring for him to organise, he started holding one mass wedding every December on the spacious grounds of the PP Savani School which he runs in Surat.

This December, 216 women will be married. At last year's event, 100,000 people had to be fed and watered – the couples, their immediate families and relatives and friends. Some 400,000 rupees are spent on each wedding, a sum that Savani says he can afford thanks to a fortune made first from diamond trading and more recently from real estate.

"Once we become his daughters, we are daughters for life. At every festival when a father is meant to go to his married daughter's house with gifts, Mahesh Papa goes to as many homes as he can. He treats his responsibility as one that's forever, not something that ends when the wedding is over," Vamja said.

GAYTRI STUDIO Savani with brides last year at his school where the mass weddings take place in Surat, India.

Meetal Gondalia, 24, who married three years ago, expresses her affection for him naturally. When called, she identified herself simply by saying "It's his daughter speaking". Gondalia, like most of the brides, is from a poor family where the widowed mother will not have the means to marry her daughter.

In India, an unmarried woman is not only stigmatised for her "misfortune" at not having a husband, she is also vulnerable to male predators seeking to take advantage of her.

Even if relatives are willing to try to find a bridegroom, few men are prepared to marry without receiving a dowry. Having spent money on their sons' education, parents want a return on their investment and that means a hefty dowry from the bride's family. For a girl who cannot give a dowry, life as an unmarried woman with no prospects is grim.

Savani saves them from this fate. He is currently busy arranging the December 25 mass marriage.

"I get all the earlier brides and their husbands to help with the arrangements. The married girls go and do all the shopping for the new brides," he said.

His wife, Bhavna, and two sons support his work. He has no daughter of his own. "I wanted to adopt but my relatives opposed me. The irony is that I don't have one daughter, I have 472," he chuckles.

Every Sunday, it is open house at the Savani home. It's the day when any bride can visit him either to keep in touch or to ask for help with a problem. On Father's Day last Sunday, about 80 brides turned up, among them Gondalia who took a hand-made card saying "I love you Papa".

Savani has no plans to stop. "The best thing is seeing the relief on the mother's and daughter's faces the moment they hear I'll take care of everything. That, and the girl's happiness on the big day." he said.

For fathers in India, Gondalia has a message.

"Please give Mahesh Papa's number to your daughters and tell them to save it.

"If, God forbid, anything happens to them, they can rest assured that Mahesh Papa will arrange their marriages and take a father's full responsibility for them."