Ravi Pillai was born on 2 September 1953 at Chavara, a coastal town in Kollam, in the state of Kerala in a family of farmers. He has an MBA from Cochin University.

During his time at university, he launched his first Business, a chit fund in Kollam on reportedly borrowed money. Later, he started an engineering contract Business and worked for some of the major industrial houses in Kerala such as Fertilisers and Chemicals Travancore Limited, Hindustan Newsprint Limited, and Cochin Refineries. However, a labour strike forced him to close down his Business, after which he went to Saudi Arabia in 1978 where he started a small trading Business. Two years later, he moved into construction, and established Nasser Al Hajri Corporation with 150 employees, which has over the years grown to become the flagship company of his Business group, RP Group, which is known to employ over 70,000 employees across its businesses. The shopping mall in South Kerala, RP Mall at Kollam city is owned by Pillai.

Pillai received an honorary doctorate from Excelsior College, New York, and was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman by the Government of India in 2008. In 2010, the Government of India included him in the Republic Day honours list for the civilian honour of Padma Shri.

Arabian Business ranked him as the fourth most powerful Indian in the Middle East in 2014.

He paid for his daughter Arathi's wedding with Adhitya Vishnu in Kollam in November 2015, at a total expense of Rupees 550 million ($8.5 millon). The wedding was organized by the production designer who worked on the film, Bahubali. This is considered to be the most expensive wedding in Kerala till date.