World retail conglomerate Lulu Group, a Dubai-based firm with an enormous presence within the UAE and Gulf nations, is all set to unfold its wings in India. Began in 2000 by Thrissur-born MA Yusuff Ali, the corporate whose Indian presence was principally restricted to Kerala, lately struck a cope with the Tamil Nadu authorities to arrange store within the state at an funding of ₹3,500 crore.
As per the Memorandum of Understanding, signed within the presence of Chief Minister MK Stalin in Dubai, the corporate plans to arrange two retail malls price ₹2,500 crore and a meals processing unit price ₹1,000 crore. The corporate has already began the development work for a hypermarket in Coimbatore.
The corporate, which began as a single mall in Dubai in 2000, is now a multinational conglomerate that has 57,000 workers working in 230 retail shops throughout 22 nations, and is raking in an annual turnover of $8 billion. The group has now forayed into delivery, info expertise, journey and tourism, schooling other than their core enterprise reminiscent of buying and selling, import and distribution, purchasing malls and hypermarkets.
Yusuff Ali’s outstanding story of constructing a enterprise empire abroad additionally displays the alternatives the Arabian soil has supplied to Indian retailers over the centuries.
Commercial
Indians and beginning of retailing in Dubai
Specialists say the financial improvement of the Gulf area was straight linked to the rise of the retailing enterprise within the Arab states. Cities like Dubai, which performed a significant position in commerce and commerce within the area, mirrored the general prosperity of the Gulf area.
In line with Dr Fatima Al-Sayegh, affiliate professor of historical past and archaeology on the UAE College, Al Ain, Dubai’s port turned the principle entrepot within the Gulf, and the busiest buying and selling port within the area in the direction of the tip of the twentieth century.
“With little or no different technique of livelihood, commerce turned the principle supply of earnings for the Shaikhdom,” she writes in her paper ‘Retailers’ position in a altering society: The case of Dubai, 1900-90’.
She says that in some ways, Dubai typifies the best way during which Gulf cities have developed over the previous 200 years. “Many have grown quickly from small service provider communities to thriving industrial centres. In truth, Dubai owes a lot of its prosperity and improvement to its retailers who performed a key position in restructuring the financial system and within the authorities decision-making course of,” she writes.
“As the principle contributors to the financial system, they performed a elementary position in implementing financial and political reforms, and had been the driving pressure behind Dubai’s improvement within the pre-oil period. When oil was struck within the mid-Nineteen Thirties and income started to pour into the state’s treasury, many predicted a decline within the affect of retailers whose revenues had shrunk, and who had consequently misplaced a few of their energy. A better examination of Dubai’s improvement reveals, nevertheless, that any decline within the retailers’ affect was solely non permanent. Even at present they proceed to play a elementary position not solely in financial affairs, but additionally in reformulating the political construction of Dubai,” Al-Sayegh writes.
Archaeological proof additionally testifies that Dubai was a distinguished stopover for merchants from India, Persia, China and Jap Africa whereas on their strategy to the West.
“Dubai’s service provider neighborhood has all the time been cosmopolitan. Indians and Persians have traded freely on equal phrases with Arab residents for hundreds of years… A whole bunch of Indian British topics, or banias, settled in Dubai after 1865. They represented British Indian corporations in Bombay and shaped a phase of the service provider class. Indians took to banking, since Muslims, sure by non secular regulation, couldn’t observe usury. It was due to this fact, the banias for probably the most half who financed the yearly pearling expeditions. As well as, the Indian retailers equipped the diving fleets with textiles and imported items, taking pearls in cost for provides. In addition they monopolized shop-keeping and retail buying and selling actions; many turned extraordinarily wealthy. Because of this, Indians comprised the second greatest financial class in Dubai,” writes Al-Sayegh.
Commerce within the time of conflict
Within the Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, when wars broke out between Arab states over oil manufacturing capability and value variations, a number of merchants switched again to their earlier roles of exporters and importers of products.
“From the early Eighties till the mid-Nineteen Nineties Dubai’s commerce with the Gulf Cooperation Council and different Gulf nations reminiscent of Iraq and Iran grew and diversified. So far as Iran is worried, Dubai loved a brisk and vigorous commerce with it throughout many of the 1980-1988 Iraqi-Iranian conflict. Dubai’s retailers revived their earlier roles as main entreports of commerce and created a brand new one as suppliers of companies. Their dhows had been taking part in backwards and forwards to the Iranian coasts laden with all kinds of shopper items, foodstuffs and tools of every kind… One other profitable enterprise which witnessed development through the conflict was servicing worldwide delivery which discovered Dubai a safer place than Kuwait or Iranian ports. Dubai’s dry dock, one of many largest on the planet, was busy sustaining and overhauling tankers in addition to repairing these broken within the combating. Dubai was due to this fact loath to relinquish its neutrality within the conflict,” writes Al-Sayegh.
Rise of Yusuff Ali
The pattern repeated within the Second Gulf Struggle of 1991. Whereas many of the retailers began packing their enterprise and shifting to different nations because of the conflict, Yusuff Ali sensed a chance within the calamity. He opened the most important grocery store in Abu Dhabi. That made the Arabs settle for him as one amongst them.
However he didn’t begin his first enterprise in a single day. Born in 1955 at Nattika, a small village in Thrissur district of Kerala, Yusuff Ali Musliam Veettil Abdul Kader, flew to Dubai in 1973. There he supported his paternal uncle MK Abdullah in working a small grocery store. He was primarily doing import and distribution of canned and frozen foodstuffs. His travels to nations like Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia gave him the thought of ‘supermarkets’.
To be exact, he was not solely on the proper place and proper time, however was additionally doing the proper factor. Following the big quantity of oil manufacturing within the Gulf nations, there was an enormous inflow of individuals from third world nations like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. To cater to their wants, primarily the meals underneath one roof, Yusuff Ali launched the Lulu grocery store after taking a mortgage of 25,000 dirhams from the then British Financial institution of the Center East.
A ‘pearl’ of an thought
He named his grocery store ‘Lulu’, which means pearl. It needs to be famous that Dubai was as soon as closely depending on the standard pearl searching trade, which was the spine of its financial system earlier than oil and retailing enterprise took over. What began as a grocery store, later became a hypermarket, after which right into a shopping center. Right this moment it has a sequence of retail malls internationally. In 2000, Lulu turned a conglomerate and Yusuff Ali launched Lulu Group Worldwide. With that improvement, he got here near UAE president Al Nahyans. The remaining is historical past.
To place in Al-Sayegh’s phrases, being a service provider, Yusuff Ali has a voice within the authorities too. Whether or not it’s hanging a peace pact between the Kerala authorities and Dubai primarily based TECOM, part of government-owned firm, Dubai Holding, on growing a sensible metropolis close to Kochi, or constructing the primary crematorium for Hindus in Abu Dhabi or intervening with the UAE authorities to grant pardon to the Indians who keep within the nation with out legitimate visas, Yusuff Ali has been a strong facilitator between each the nations.
ETA, the forgotten Empire
The success of Yusuff Ali and his enterprise empire can also be paying homage to the Emirates Buying and selling Company or ETA Ascon – Star Group, often known as ETA Group, which as soon as employed almost 70,000 folks in 23 nations.
Based in 1973, the corporate initially targeted on the development trade and later moved into areas like aviation, hospitality and shopper electronics amongst others. The ETA Ascon-Star Group is a partnership agency of Al Ghurair Group, Dubai and a Tamil entrepreneur BS Abdur Rahman. The latter served because the vice-chairman of the group from 1973 to until his loss of life in 2015.
Rahman was additionally the founding father of East Coast Constructions and Industries which has constructed many iconic constructions like Anna Flyover (or Gemini Flyover), Kodambakkam Flyover, Chepauk Stadium, Valluvar Kottam and Marina Lighthouse. His interval is taken into account as a ‘golden interval’ by most of the former workers of ETA. It’s mentioned that Rahman used to say that ETA means ‘Engeyum Tamil Aatkal’ (Tamils in every single place).
On social media, most of the former workers of ETA remembered how their lives had been modified for good within the Seventies, Eighties and Nineteen Nineties for the reason that firm paid and cared for them effectively. They mentioned that it was disheartening to know that ETA Ascon Group isn’t any extra now.
“If ETA Ascon was managed effectively on the high stage after the interval of Abdur Rahman, most likely all of the privileges loved by Lulu Group now would have gone to ETA Group,” mentioned a former worker.