The Mumbai-based coach, TEDx speaker and novelist is building a leadership universe, one book, one stage and one journey at a time.
-- When the global travel company where he had spent 24 years, rising to Senior Vice President, shut its doors in 2019, Yusuf Poonawala lost the career that had defined him. "Travel is the vehicle. Reinvention is the destination," he says. Today, he is an Amazon bestselling author, a multiple TEDx speaker, and the founder of a luxury travel agency, driven by a mission to help 100,000 people become self-reliant, successful, and happy entrepreneurs.
The stage and the recognition
His TEDx talks include Ignite with Passion - Why Purpose Outlasts Profit at TEDxNMFC and The Balanced Leader at TEDxNerul. Two of his five talks have crossed one million views each. He has received the Governor's Award for Excellence in Leadership 2025, presented by the Governor of Maharashtra and Goa, and the Viksit Bharat Award, named for India's vision of a developed nation by 2047. In August 2026, he gave a fireside talk at the Viksit Bharat Conclave in Delhi. His story has appeared in Forbes, The Indian Express and CEO Magazine.
The Balanced Leader: a mentor, a student, a system
His flagship series, The Balanced Leader, published by bestselling author Aditya Nighhot’s company Dreamboat Publishing, follows the mentorship between Yusuf and a driven young entrepreneur, Arjun Sharma. Volume I opens with a collapse mid-meeting and offers a working system for physical and mental balance, time and energy, and team trust. Volume II turns inward to the psychological ceilings, financial blind spots and fears that tactics alone can't fix.
The Spanish Table: a romance debut novel
In 2026, he turned to fiction with The Spanish Table, published again by Dreamboat Publishing, which became an Amazon bestseller, was commissioned by the Spain Tourism Authority of India, and launched on World Book Day by Chetan Bhagat. The Shroff-Agarwal family of South Mumbai takes a 15-day self-drive trip across Spain. Each member carries a secret, and Spain itself narrates as the fifth character.
"Easy honesty isn't honesty," says Poonawala. "I used to think my job was to hand people answers. Now I think it's sometimes to hand people a family, a road trip, a table, and let them find their own answer inside it."
Lux Voyages by Yusuf
In Colaba, Mumbai, his boutique luxury travel agency, established in 2022, is built on a "Holistic Travel" philosophy. Its "Travel Curator with a Movie Mindset" approach treats every itinerary as a story, not a template.
The Y Factor
The same cinematic eye powers The Y Factor, his YouTube channel. He reviews movies from the seat of a paying audience member, with no festival-circuit vocabulary and no half-star hedging. Every review ends on one question: does it have The Y Factor?
A man with different talents, Yusuf Poonawala’s books should definitely be on your bucket list. Grab copies of his bestsellers from Amazon before they stock out!
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