The Kerala Ten: Business Titans Rewriting India and the Gulf in 2026

Walk into a Lulu Hypermarket in Sharjah on a Friday evening, then a Muthoot branch in Ernakulam on Monday morning, and you start to feel it: the quiet, persistent Kerala thread running through the commerce of two continents. The men listed below grew up with the same coconut palms, the same rubber-stamped passports, the same Gulf-bound Air India tickets. In 2026, they sit on top of conglomerates spanning retail, finance, healthcare, education, jewellery and IT. Here, in no ranking order, are the ten Kerala-origin business leaders most worth watching this year.

The retail and construction giants of the Gulf

M.A. Yusuff Ali remains the most visible Malayali on the Gulf stage. Born in Nattika, Thrissur, the chairman of Abu Dhabi-headquartered Lulu Group International runs more than 250 hypermarkets and malls across the GCC, India, Egypt and the Far East, with group revenues running into many billions of US dollars. Lulu Retail's 2024 IPO on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange was the region's largest of the year and only sharpened his profile. In Kochi, his Lulu Mall on the NH Bypass still posts some of the highest footfall numbers of any Indian mall, and his Lulu International Convention Centre in Thrissur keeps him close to the soil he came from.

Ravi Pillai, founder of RP Group, is the Kollam-born construction baron who built much of Saudi Arabia's industrial spine. Through Nasser S. Al Hajri Corporation and a sprawl of education, hospitality and healthcare ventures, he employs well over a hundred thousand workers, a large share of them from Kerala. He shuttles between Bahrain, Dubai and his home base in Kollam, where his hospital and engineering college bear the family name. Forbes still lists him comfortably among India's billionaires in 2026.

The Kerala-bred industrialists

Kochouseph Chittilappilly is the unflashy Thrissur engineer who turned a 100-square-foot voltage stabiliser workshop into V-Guard Industries, now a publicly listed consumer electricals major with a market capitalisation in the tens of thousands of crores. His second act, Wonderla Holidays, runs theme parks in Kochi, Bangalore and Hyderabad with a new Bhubaneswar park ramping up. He is also Kerala's most famous voluntary kidney donor, a fact locals quote more often than his balance sheet.

George Alexander Muthoot, managing director of Muthoot Finance, anchors the family that turned a gold-loan counter in Kozhencherry into India's largest NBFC of its kind. With more than 6,000 branches, an AUM north of Rs 90,000 crore and a steady listing on the BSE and NSE, the Muthoot name is woven into India's small-business credit story. The Kochi corporate office on M.G. Road and the family's foundation work in Pathanamthitta keep the headquarters spiritually rooted in central Kerala.

V.P. Nandakumar, chairman of Valapad-headquartered Manappuram Finance, runs the other great Thrissur gold-loan house. Manappuram's microfinance arm Asirvad, its housing finance subsidiary and a fast-growing vehicle finance book have pushed consolidated AUM past Rs 40,000 crore. Nandakumar, a former bank officer, is a familiar face on Kochi's CII and FICCI panels and a steady donor to Thrissur Pooram festivities.

Education, healthcare and the diaspora professionals

Sunny Varkey, born in Thalassery and raised in Dubai, chairs GEMS Education, the world's largest private K-12 schools operator with hundreds of thousands of students across the UAE, UK, Egypt and beyond. He is also the force behind the Varkey Foundation and the annual Global Teacher Prize, worth one million US dollars. His Indian High School in Dubai remains a finishing school for generations of Malayali professionals who later staff Kochi's IT corridor.

Azad Moopen, the Wayanad-born physician who founded Aster DM Healthcare, runs one of the Gulf's largest private hospital networks. After the 2024 separation of the Indian and GCC arms, the India business listed as Aster DM Healthcare on the NSE while Alpha GCC Holdings runs the Gulf hospitals and clinics. Together they cover tens of facilities across India and the Middle East, with Aster Medcity in Kochi serving as the group's clinical flagship.

Sajan Pillai, the Trivandrum engineer who built UST Global into a multi-billion-dollar digital services firm out of Aliso Viejo, California, is now executive chairman of Episeio Business Services and a mentor across Kerala's startup scene. UST employs more than thirty thousand people globally, with Technopark Trivandrum among its largest delivery centres, and Pillai's Season Two Ventures has quietly seeded a string of Kochi-based deep-tech founders.

Jewellery, gold and the Chemmanur play

Joy Alukkas, the Thrissur jeweller who turned a single family shop in Kerala into a global jewellery chain, runs more than 160 Joyalukkas showrooms across India, the GCC, the US, UK, Singapore and Malaysia, with annual revenues in the multi-billion-dollar range. Even after a much-watched 2023 IPO withdrawal, the group remains one of the largest jewellery brands by retail footprint, and its flagship Kochi store on M.G. Road still sets the tone for the region's bridal market.

Bobby Chemmanur, chairman of Chemmanur International Group, runs a jewellery, finance, real estate and media empire from Thrissur with showrooms across South India and the Gulf. He is the showman of the group, equally famous for his motorcycle rides to Mount Everest base camp and his Bobby Chemmanur International Foundation, which funds eye camps and disaster relief across Kerala. In a year when the rupee, gold and remittances are all back in the headlines, his bet on retail jewellery as a Malayali emotional asset looks well-timed.

Ten men, one coastline, and a balance sheet that the rest of India and the Gulf can no longer ignore.