M.A. Yusuff Ali flies to Thiruvananthapuram as India-Gulf food supply chain deepens

M.A. Yusuff Ali flew from a remote airstrip in the Arabian Sea to Thiruvananthapuram on May 27, 2026, aboard his Gulfstream G600 (T7-YMA). The 45-minute hop from the coordinates 11.972, 73.605 — effectively an offshore departure — brought the LuLu Group chairman to Kerala's southern capital just as his company's emergency food-supply pipeline from India to the Gulf enters its most intensive phase.

The same week, LuLu Group confirmed it has operated 34 dedicated chartered flights and shipped roughly 15,000 tonnes of perishable and non-perishable food products from India to GCC markets, per a report from the Times of India. Yusuff Ali met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi on March 26 to discuss maintaining supply continuity amid the Iran-Israel-US conflict, and this visit to Thiruvananthapuram — home to a key sourcing region for the group's export hubs — suggests he is personally overseeing supply-chain logistics on the Indian end as the crisis grinds on.

Yusuff Ali, who holds a minority stake in Cochin International Airport and maintains deep ties to Kerala, has made Thiruvananthapuram a recurring destination. The G600, acquired in 2024 with a 6,600-nautical-mile range, replaces his older G550 and allows nonstop reach from Abu Dhabi — flexibility the chairman has clearly been using as LuLu scrambles to keep Gulf shelves stocked from Indian farms.