NRI uses daughter's wedding to promote Kerala

Trivandrum - Pillai, who is ranked by Forbes in the World's Billionaires list at 988 and at 30 in India, has also announced a slew of charity programmes to mark the wedding.

Kerala will witness a huge gathering of top businessmen from across the world and members of royal families from Middle East during the last week of November when Middle East-based Keralite businessman B Ravi Pillai celebrates his daughter's marriage.
Though the formal marriage ceremony of Dr Arathi Pillai with Dr. Aditya Vishnu was conducted at Tirupathi temple in Andhra Pradesh without any fanfare, the 62-year-old businessman has lined up a huge celebration for four days from November 24.
Pillai told reporters at Quilon, his home town, that he had invited hundreds of CEOs of global companies in order to promote his home state as an investment destination.
Majority of them, visiting the state for the first time, will spend about a week in Kerala.
The wedding will also see the presence of top members of royal families in the Middle East, politicians, actors and socialites from across India. The four-day long function, which will begin on 24 November in Quilon, will see a variety of cultural programmes by popular actors and singers.
Singer Manjari's ghazals and actress Navya Nair's dance fusion are the major highlights of the celebration.
Besides this, actresses like Shobhana, Manju Warrier and Rimy Tommy will also perform on the occasion.
Pillai, who is ranked by Forbes in the World's Billionaires list at 988 and at 30 in India, has also announced a slew of charity programmes to mark the wedding.
About 10,000 people at his home town and Kovalam will benefit from the charity project.
Pillai has earmarked Rs100 million for the charity, which include financial assistance to cancer patients. Ranked as the fourth most powerful Indian in the Middle East in 2014, Pillai owns the R.P. Group, which provides direct employment to 85,000 people, mostly in the Middle-East countries. The number is likely to cross 100,000 in another two years when his ongoing projects, which include a $1.5 billion hospitality project in Dubai, are completed. Pillai, who owns two five star hotels in Kerala, is also building third one in the state.
He has also expressed interest in exploiting Kerala's huge potential in mineral separation projects. He said that he was ready to invest under the public-private-partnership mode.
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