Sukruti, a college student in Abu Dhabi, had reason to worry. Instability across West Asia threatened to disrupt the one thing she needed most for her Onam celebrations: fresh marigolds for her home’s pookalam. These flower arrangements sit at the heart of how Malayali families mark the harvest festival, and without them, the holiday would feel incomplete. The flowers arrived on time, carried by a coordinated effort between LuLu Group’s chartered aircraft and conventional air cargo routes that moved blooms from Indian farms directly to Gulf doorsteps.
The logistics operation reflects the scale of Malayali life across the region. More than two million Malayalis now live and work throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, and with them has come a seasonal ritual: the arrival of fresh flowers for Onam. What began as a cultural necessity has become a significant commercial undertaking, one that LuLu Group has shaped into a specialized operation timed precisely to the festival calendar.
This year’s effort was ambitious. LuLu brought more than 10,000 tonnes of flowers from India to GCC markets specifically for Onam, a volume roughly 20 percent higher than the previous year. The increase reflects genuine demand from the region’s Malayali communities, who view the flowers not as luxury items but as essential elements of their festival observance. The marigolds and other varieties used in traditional pookalams came primarily from two sourcing hubs: Bengaluru in Karnataka and Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, both regions with established flower farming operations capable of supplying international markets.
The path from farm to celebration is complex. Flowers are consolidated at those hubs before traveling to Kochi, where they enter a multi-modal transport network. From there, LuLu deployed two dedicated chartered cargo flights running between Kochi and Abu Dhabi alongside regular air cargo services to other GCC nations. Sea shipments supplemented the air routes, creating redundancy in a supply chain that operates under real time pressure. Fresh flowers cannot wait.
The regional crisis created genuine uncertainty about whether this system would hold. Air routes faced restrictions, and sea lanes became unpredictable. Yet LuLu reported no significant disruptions to its Onam supply chain, crediting diversified logistics arrangements and established relationships across its sourcing network. Using multiple transport modes meant that when one route faced challenges, others could compensate.
By contrast, the farmers in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka experienced the season differently. For them, the Onam rush represents something beyond domestic markets: a concentrated export window when their produce commands premium prices in the Gulf. LuLu’s sourcing operations provided predictable demand and established logistics infrastructure, giving growers a reliable outlet at the most valuable moment in their calendar.
For Sukruti and the millions of other Malayalis marking Onam across the Gulf, the arrival of fresh flowers meant their celebration could proceed as tradition demanded. The pookalam could be arranged, the festival observed, and the connection to home maintained through something as simple and essential as flowers. Whether next year’s supply chain holds as steady, should regional tensions persist, remains the question hanging over every future harvest season.