Sunny Kulathakal

January 2015 \ Diaspora News \ Diaspora—Gulf

Every once in a while an individual is born, who by his sheer energy and enthusiasm, shakes up the world and influences thousands of others to wake up, take note and act. Sunny Kulathakal is one such individual. After serving the nation’s leading publications as a journalist and an author, he went on from India to the Middle East and set about co-ordinating activities to help the less fortunate of the NRI and PIO community tide through hard times and benefit from a collaborative awareness of opportunities and solutions. Walking the talk, he uses his acres of land back home in Bangalore and his flagship venture Sunliz Publications, to pursue nature friendly initiatives and employment generating projects. A vibrant personality brimming with positive energy, Sunny and his wife Elizabeth have nurtured Sunliz Publications to the status of an iconic publishing house across the whole of the Middle East

The power of knowing who’s who

Sunny played a key role in making the Indian diaspora in the Gulf a tightly knit family. His exhaustive Gulf Who’s Who, a directory of Gulf business leaders and Indian expatriates, helps thousands of people with the right contact information for their specific needs, like employment, housing, business etc. The vast amount of data contained therein is also a celebration of the great Indian success story in the Middle East. This pioneering idea by Sunny took a lot of hardwork and determination as he had to work on it even in the absence of telephone directories. After the first Gulf Who’s Who Directory was published in 1978, which was a collector’s item, Sunny launched Gulf Who’s Who, Bahrain, which was more comprehensive and gave an overview of all businesses in Bahrain including in-depth coverage of who needed to be contacted in each organization.