Gulf powerful Indians list has 4 Malayalis in top 10

Four Malayalee businessmen are among the first ten in the 100 most powerful Indians in the Gulf — a region to where people from Kerala have flocked in large numbers for half a century now.

EMKE Group founder Yussuffali MA has topped the list of the GCC’s 100 most powerful Indians, published on Sunday by Arabian Business, the Middle East’s best-selling weekly business magazine.

GEMS Group chairman Sunny Varkey secured the third spot, while Gulfar vice-chairman P Mohamed Ali occupied the fifth spot. PNC Menon, chairman of Shobha Developers, is in the 9th position. EMKE group, which owns the Lulu chain of hypermarkets, is headquartered in Abu Dhabi and has offices in 29 countries. It employs around 27,000 people — including 22,000 Indians, a major chunk of who are from Kerala. It has an annual turnover of $3.75bn.

Occupying slot number 2 is another retail giant, Landmark boss Micky Jagtiani. GEMS’s Varkey is the brain behind one of the world’s largest school operators.

The highest-ranked banker was Standard Chartered CEO V Shankar. He took the fourth place. Shankar is one of two bankers to secure spots in the top 10, with Doha Bank CEO R Seetharaman rounding up the rankings.

The list is dominated by businessmen based in the Arab emirates. That is hardly surprising, given that India-UAE bilateral trade topped $43bn last year. A report from Doha Bank last week noted that the total trade between the six Gulf countries and India stood at $80bn in the first nine months of this year alone.

Edward Attwood, deputy editor of 2001-launched Arabian Business, said this year’s list proved the volume of contribution Indians have made to the development of the Gulf in the past few years. “What is fascinating about the list,” he noted, “is that many of those close to the top of it came to the region several years ago — without any real income. Through sheer hard work, they have built empires worth billions of dollars.”