About
About Al Ameen Group
One group, one standard: chauffeur service held to a hospitality-grade discipline, and full staff and coach fleets run at scale — all under the same control room and the same safety system.
When was Al Ameen Group established?
Al Ameen Group dates from 1999, when the transport business behind it began with one bus in Abu Dhabi. That business took the name Al Ameen Transport — today's AAT Transport, the group's founding company — in 2008, and the group has since grown to nine companies.
Who started Al Ameen Group?
Al Ameen Group grew from a transport business that Aboobacker Thuppath started in Abu Dhabi in 1999 with one bus. His son, Mohammed Rafiq Thuppath, took over in 2012 and built it into a group of nine companies; he is the group’s Founder, Owner and Managing Director.
How many vehicles does Al Ameen Group run?
Al Ameen Group runs more than 500 vehicles across the UAE, from its offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. It began with a single bus in 1999.
Our story
It began with one bus.
1999
The first bus.
Abu Dhabi, 1999. As far as anyone could see, there was no such thing yet as a professionally run staff-transport company in the UAE — no operator whose whole business was to carry a company’s people to work and back, on time, every day, in vehicles kept for exactly that. Companies made do. Aboobacker Thuppath looked at that gap and saw a business.
He began with what he had: one bus, one man, and the conviction that the country was about to need this far more than it yet knew. The man standing beside the bus in the photograph above is him.
He did not do it alone. With a UAE national as his partner, he set up a transport company to carry staff for hotels and for the other big industries of the day. That company was the first brick. Everything the group is today was built on it.
2008
A name to live up to.
From that one bus, vehicle by vehicle, he built a corporate transport service. In 2008 he gave it a name: Al Ameen Transport — the AAT Transport of today, and the founding company of the group. In Arabic, Al Ameen means the trustworthy one. It is a promise as much as a name. The name is from 2008; the group counts its beginning from 1999, when the first bus went on the road.
2012
From father to son.
In 2012, his son, Rafiq Thuppath, took over the company. What he took on was a transport business with a name and a fleet. What he built from it is the group you are reading about: not one company but a family of them, each doing one part of the same job — moving people well. School transport. Chauffeur-driven cars. Tour coaches. A garage. Car rental. Travel and tourism. A car wash. One company at a time, in that order, until his father’s transport company had become Al Ameen Group.
Today
From one bus to five hundred.
Today, Al Ameen Group is nine companies and more than 500 vehicles, running across the UAE from offices in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. The road from there to here is easy to describe and long to travel: one bus in 1999, hundreds now.
The print above is where it began. The reception below — the Dubai head office, the group’s name on the wall and its timeline beside it — is where it is now. Between the two photographs lie nearly three decades, a father and a son, and one promise that has not changed: be there, be ready, and be worth trusting with what matters.
1999
One bus
Today
500+
Vehicles across the UAE
The journey
One bus, then nine companies.
Every step of the road, year by year, exactly as the group keeps it on the wall of its Dubai head office. Companies with a page on this site are linked.
1999
The first bus
Aboobacker Thuppath puts his first bus on the road in Abu Dhabi, with a UAE national as his partner: staff transport for hotels and the other big industries of the day.
2008
Foundation and passenger transport
AAT TransportAl Ameen Transport Passengers by Bus L.L.C
The business gets its name, Al Ameen Transport. Its purpose, in the group’s own words: safe, reliable and efficient passenger transport — the foundation for everything that followed.
2012
Father to son
Rafiq Thuppath takes over the company from his father, Aboobacker Thuppath, and starts building it into a group.
2020
School transport
Al Ameen School Transport L.L.C
A company just for school transport: safe, on-time travel for students across many routes.
2021
Limousine services
AAT Limousine
AAT Limousine – Sole Proprietorship L.L.C · AAT Limousine Luxury Car Services L.L.C
Chauffeur-driven cars and personal service for high-end clients and business executives.
2022
Tour by buses
AAT Transport by Tour Buses L.L.C
Coach tours and group travel packages for holidaymakers, built around comfort.
2023
Auto garage
AAT Tyres & Auto GarageAAT Auto Garage LLC
The group’s own garage for maintenance and repair — keeping the fleet reliable, and open to outside customers too.
2024
Rent a car
AAT Rent a CarAAT Rent A Car LLC
Car rental for companies and business clients — flexible, convenient transport.
2025
Travel and tourism
The group’s travel and tourism company: tour planning, travel management and event coordination. Details coming soon.
2026
Car wash
Vehicle washing — the newest company, and the last gap around the vehicle closed.
The founder
Mohammed Rafiq Thuppath
Founder, Owner and Managing Director
Mohammed Rafiq Thuppath took over Al Ameen Transport from his father, Aboobacker Thuppath, in 2012, and built one transport company into Al Ameen Group: nine companies, based in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, that carry staff, schoolchildren, executives and tourists across the UAE — and that maintain, rent and wash the vehicles they run.
The order the companies came in says a lot about how he thinks. Transport stayed at the heart of it. A company just for school transport followed in 2020 — the simplest work in the business and the least forgiving, because a parent hands over a child and expects them back, on time, every day.
Read his full storyShow less
AAT Limousine opened in 2021 for a different kind of passenger — executives, delegations and guests in chauffeur-driven cars. The vehicles changed; the questions did not. Is it here? Is it clean? Is it on time? Tour coaches came in 2022, bringing the same discipline to holiday travel.
Then, in 2023, came the decision that says the most about how he runs a business. Instead of sending the fleet out to be repaired, he brought the repairs in. AAT Tyres & Auto Garage now services the group’s own vehicles, including the AAT Limousine cars, and takes outside customers too. A company that sells punctuality cannot afford to wait in someone else’s queue.
AAT Rent a Car followed in 2024, for companies and business clients, and a travel and tourism company in 2025, so the group could plan a journey as well as drive it. AAT Car Wash, in 2026, closed the last gap around the same vehicle: keep it, mend it, clean it, put a chauffeur in it, and send it out ready.
Its vehicles have carried government departments, hotels, hospitals, schools, energy companies and event organisers. Nine companies on, the test is still the one his father’s first bus faced in 1999: did it come, was it clean, and was it on time.
Where he is from
Tirur, Malappuram district, Kerala — South India
Mohammed Rafiq Thuppath is from Tirur, a town in the Malappuram district of Kerala, on India’s south-western coast. Kerala is known around the world as God's Own Country: a narrow, green state between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats, laced with backwater channels, rice fields and spice and tea hills, and washed by the monsoon twice a year.
Tirur stands on the Tirur River, a few kilometres inland from the Arabian Sea, and it has a long memory. Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan, the sixteenth-century poet regarded as the father of the Malayalam language, was born here, and at Thunchan Parambu, his memorial, children are still brought each year to write their first letters. Kerala’s first railway ran from Tirur to Beypore in 1861. The betel leaf grown around the town has been traded for generations and now carries its own Geographical Indication.
Kerala has the highest literacy rate of any Indian state, and a long-held reputation for hospitality and plain, straight dealing. That is the standard he grew up with, and the one he has asked of every company in the group since.
One standard
What the group can evidence.
Maintained in-house
AAT Tyres & Auto Garage, a group company, services the AAT Limousine fleet — the group maintains what it operates.
Nine companies, 5 public
Al Ameen Group of Companies has nine companies. Five have a public presence of their own and are listed on this site. The journey above shows the others as the group records them; none is guessed at.
Sectors
Who the group has carried.
The sectors the group works across, since 1999.
- Government & semi-government
- Hospitality & hotels
- Tourism & DMC
- Education
- Healthcare
- Energy & industrial
- Professional services
- Corporate & media
- Sports & events