M.A. Yusuff Ali

Net worth over time

Biography

• Middle East retail king M.A. Yusuff Ali presides over $7.3 billion (revenue) LuLu Retail, with 240 hypermarkets and malls in the Gulf and elsewhere.
• Hailing from a village in Kerala state in south India, Yusuff Ali left for Abu Dhabi in 1973 to join his uncle's small distribution business.
• In 2024, Yusuff Ali listed the retail business on the Abu Dhabi stock exchange, raising $1.7 billion.
• Yusuff Ali has a minority stake in Cochin International Airport and sits on its board. The airport runs on solar energy.
• Other assets include the Waldorf Astoria in Scotland and the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, the former headquarters of the U.K. Metropolitan Police.
• Yusuff Ali donated $6.8 million to fight the Covid-19 pandemic.He also built and donated a treatment center with 1,400 beds in Kerala.
• Yusuff Ali opened his first LuLu hypermarket in the 1990s at the height of the Gulf War.
• His son-in-law Shamsheer Vayalil runs his separate healthcare business.
• In February 2025, a video of him carrying the coffin of an employee who died of a heart attack in Abu Dhabi, went viral.

Financial assets