Indian billionaire MA Yusuff Ali spotted boarding a public bus in Dubai goes viral: What’s the story?

Indian billionaire MA Yusuff Ali spotted boarding a public bus in Dubai goes viral: What’s the story?

A few seconds of video is all it took to set off a familiar internet reaction. MA Yusuff Ali, the India-born chairman of Lulu Group, is seen stepping onto a public bus in Dubai, greeting the driver with a handshake, and acknowledging fellow passengers with the ease of someone who is not performing for the camera. The clip has been shared widely across social platforms, and the comments follow a predictable arc: admiration for a billionaire who appears approachable, disbelief that someone of his stature would use public transport, and the inevitable debate about whether the moment is genuine or curated.

What makes the clip travel is the contrast it offers. Dubai is a city where conspicuous wealth is part of the landscape, and where business leaders are usually associated with private cars and closed-door meetings. A public bus, by comparison, feels intentionally ordinary. That gap between expectation and reality is exactly what gives the video its punch. Even people who know little about Ali or Lulu Group can instantly read the scene as a quiet rebuke to “VIP culture,” or at least as a reminder that status does not have to dictate every public interaction.

Ali’s rise is part of why the gesture resonates. Born in Kerala, he built his business career in the Gulf and eventually created one of the region’s most recognisable retail networks through Lulu Group International. The company’s hypermarkets and supermarkets are embedded in daily life across multiple countries, and the scale of that footprint has made him a prominent figure among Indian expatriate business leaders in the Middle East. His fortune is often cited at around $5.9 billion, which only sharpens the contrast between his wealth and the simplicity of the bus moment.

At the same time, the viral response says as much about the audience as it does about him. In an era when leadership is judged not only by quarterly results but also by tone, symbolism and visibility, small interactions can carry disproportionate weight. A handshake with a driver becomes a proxy for values: respect for workers, comfort with ordinary settings, and a lack of distance.

There is no clear evidence that the scene was staged. It looks like one of those candid clips that bystanders capture and post because it feels unexpected. But authenticity, online, is rarely a settled question. What is clear is why it landed: the video offers a simple image of power behaving normally, and people are hungry for that.