E.M. Babu remembers only too well what life was like in the early 1990s, before he and a group of other overseas Indians working in the Middle East helped fund a new international airport in Kerala, the lush green state at India's southern tip.

At that time, the flight from Dubai to Kerala was routed through Mumbai, with domestic connections to the state's colonial-era capital, Cochin, departing the next day. What is today a four-hour flight was an overnight ordeal.