How a Pune horse breeder built a $20 bn global vaccine empire

That curiosity would eventually spawn a global vaccine empire. The scale is fantastic to say the least. One out of every two children born on this planet is vaccinated using its product. When FinancialExpress.com asked about his biggest achievement, “That we never compromised on affordability. That was always the principle that a vaccine made by Serum should be accessible, not just to countries that could pay a premium, but to everyone.”

He added, “There was always pressure to price higher, to maximise margins, and I understand the business logic of that. But it was never what drove us. During COVID-19, especially when the whole world was watching and the demand was unlike anything we had ever seen, we held the line. We supplied at a price that developing nations could manage. I think that decision, more than anything else, is what I want to be remembered for.” 

The young man, who is now well into his eighties, is Cyrus Soli Poonawalla. This is his story.  

A childhood shaped by horses and ambition

Cyrus Poonawalla was born on 11 May 1941, into a Parsi family in Pune. His father, Soli Poonawalla, had established the Poonawalla Stud Farms in 1946, and the family’s world revolved around horses, their breeding, their bloodlines, their races.

But there was something else Cyrus grew up watching: the slow dilution of family wealth across generations. His great-great-grandfather, Dhanjishaw Ankleshwaria, had been a formidable man, a leading contractor in Pune who came to be called “Poonawalla Seth,” the man from Pune. The name stuck and eventually became the family surname. But Dhanjishaw had eleven sons and three daughters, and the fortune, however large, had to be divided across all of them, and then divided again.

Cyrus watched this and drew his own conclusions. He kept his family deliberately small. He once reportedly joked that he could not afford more sons. 

As a teenager in Pune, he was drawn to the lifestyles of wealthy Parsi industrial families, the Jehangirs, the Jeejeebhoys. He was also drawn to horse racing, to the betting that came with it, and briefly considered becoming a bookmaker. 

Early ventures 

After college, Cyrus joined the family business. He understood, even then, that horse racing had a limited ceiling in socialist-era India. So he looked sideways, the way people with restless minds tend to do, and found the automobile industry.

Together with a friend named Don Patrick, he tried to build a sports car prototype. They were inspired by the Jaguar D-Type. The prototype was called the Cydon, which was Cyrus and Don compressed into one word. Soon, they realised that commercial production required capital they simply did not have. The project was abandoned. Cyrus reportedly kept the prototype. 

He returned to horses. Over his lifetime, he held positions as Chairman of the Royal Western India Turf Club, of the Turf Authorities of India, and of the Stud Book Authority of India. Horses bred at the Poonawalla farms won more than 384 classic races and several Indian Derbies. At the International Horse Racing Conference in Paris in 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award for the sport. It has become pretty clear by now that horses were in the family’s bones.

But the insight that would change everything did not come from a racetrack.

The conversation that changed everything

It came from a veterinarian. Retired horses from the Poonawalla farms were being sent to the government-run Haffkine Institute in Mumbai. A veterinarian named Dr Balakrishnan mentioned to Poonawalla that horse serum was being used there to manufacture vaccines and anti-toxins.

After a conversation with the doctor, he began to understand the process – how serum from horses could be used to produce life-saving vaccines, and how India was largely dependent on expensive imports for many of them.

The question that followed was simple, and enormous: why couldn’t someone do this independently, affordably, in India?

In 1966, Cyrus Poonawalla founded the Serum Institute of India in Pune. He was twenty-five years old. He had a commerce degree, a stud farm, and a conviction that vaccines should not be a luxury.

As per public records, the initial capital was somewhere between Rs 99,000 and Rs 5 lakh. The twelve acres of land on which the company was established were once a horse burial ground. The foundation stone was reportedly laid on the day of his wedding. 

He had no scientists of his own, so he hired them from the Haffkine Institute. Dr P.M. Wagle, the former director of Haffkine, was among the early experts associated with the company. 

His early guiding philosophy was stated simply: “Health for all by 2000 AD.”

From a burial ground to the world’s pharmacy

Serum Institute made its first product in 1967-68. Anti-tetanus serum, produced using horses, later replaced by discarded army mules. The DTP vaccine came in 1974. Anti-snake venom in 1981. The measles vaccine in 1989.

Within a year of that last launch, Serum Institute was India’s largest vaccine manufacturer.

In 1994, the World Health Organisation gave the company its accreditation. UNICEF followed. The Pan American Health Organisation followed. By 1998, vaccines were going to over a hundred countries.

By 2000, one in every two children in the world was receiving a vaccine Serum Institute had made.

Poonawalla kept the company private. Deliberately. He did not want shareholders deciding that affordability was bad for margins. “Saving lives,” he said, “should take precedence over maximising profits.” He held that line for decades, against every pressure to do otherwise. The Gates Foundation later credited Serum Institute with expanding access to affordable vaccines across the developing world.

The pandemic years

When COVID-19 arrived, Serum Institute was already the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world by number of doses. The question was whether it could scale to meet a demand that had no precedent.

Cyrus Poonawalla and his son Adar, who had become CEO in 2011, decided not to wait for regulatory approvals before beginning production. They invested approximately $250 million upfront. They later required more than $1 billion to scale fully. It was a bet that the vaccines would be approved, and that the world could not afford to lose the months that waiting would cost.

The partnership with AstraZeneca and Oxford University produced Covishield. By the end of December 2020, Serum Institute had stockpiled approximately 200 million doses. By the end of 2021, they had delivered around 2 billion COVID vaccine doses globally.

None of it was without cost. A fire broke out at the Pune facility. Raw materials ran short. India restricted vaccine exports during its devastating second wave, leaving countries dependent on Covishield supplies scrambling for alternatives. The pressure on the family and the institution during those years was, by Adar Poonawalla’s own account, unlike anything they had faced before.

Through it all, Cyrus Poonawalla’s position did not change. Vaccines should be affordable. Access should be universal. The business would sustain itself not by charging what the market could bear, but by reaching the greatest number of people possible.

The dynasty, and what endures

Vaccines were always the centre, but never the whole story. The broader Cyrus Poonawalla Group expanded into finance, clean energy, hospitality, real estate, aviation, and entertainment. Poonawalla Fincorp became a significant NBFC focused on consumer and business lending. Poonawalla Clean Energy pursued renewable initiatives. 

The group owns the Ritz-Carlton Pune and the Poonawalla Business Bay. Under Adar’s leadership, the family invested in Dharma Productions and acquired a stake in the Rajasthan Royals IPL franchise. The vaccine king, it turns out, also owns a piece of the IPL. 

The man behind the institution

Alongside all of it, the institute, the board rooms, the WHO approvals, Cyrus Poonawalla remained, at his core, a collector. Of horses, of cars, of art, of time.

His car collection reportedly includes Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and Mercedes-Benz, alongside vintage vehicles. 

He is also a collector of Indian and international art. In April 2026, he reportedly purchased Raja Ravi Varma’s “Yashoda and Krishna” for Rs 167.2 crore, which was the highest price ever paid for an Indian artwork at auction.

In 2015, he acquired Lincoln House in Mumbai’s Breach Candy, the former US Consulate, known for its Indo-Saracenic architecture, for approximately Rs 750 crore. The family also acquired Aberconway House in London’s Grosvenor Square for around £42 million. 

He purchased a pencil portrait of Mahatma Gandhi along with handwritten letters at a London auction in 2017. He collects Vacheron Constantin and Audemars Piguet watches. He is, by his own admission, a cigar enthusiast, and once said he designed his living spaces large partly because he and his wife enjoyed smoking in them.

His wife, Villoo, passed away in 2010. After her death, the family established the Villoo Poonawalla Foundation in her memory. They also established the Villoo Poonawalla Wildlife Hospital in Pune for injured and sick wild animals. 

He also established the Soli Poonawalla Memorial High School, named after his father, the man whose stud farm started all of this. 

Beyond the boardroom

In 1988, more than two decades after founding Serum Institute, Cyrus Poonawalla earned a PhD from Pune University. His doctoral thesis examined improved technology in the manufacture of specific anti-toxins and its socio-economic impact on society. 

He later received honorary doctorates from the University of Oxford and the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Poonawalla was awarded the Padma Shri in 2005 and the Padma Bhushan in 2022, alongside multiple entrepreneurship and lifetime achievement honours.

What he wants to be remembered for

When asked how the journey has been, “Honestly, very fulfilling. When I started, I had no roadmap; nobody had done quite what I was attempting to do in India at that scale. There were difficult periods, financial pressures, moments where you wonder if you’ve taken on more than you can manage. But I never seriously considered stepping back. The work always felt important enough to push through. And when I look at where we are today… the scale of what Serum has become, what Adar has built on top of it, I think it has exceeded even my own expectations. I have very few complaints,” Cyrus Poonawalla told financialexpress.com.

The Hurun Global Rich List 2023 identified Cyrus Poonawalla as the richest healthcare billionaire in the world. Public estimates in recent years place the family’s net worth above $20 billion. Forbes India’s Rich List has consistently ranked them among India’s wealthiest.

Over 50% of the world’s babies receive at least one vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute. Millions of children’s lives have been saved through vaccines that were priced within reach of the countries that needed them most.

A commerce graduate from Pune, who once tried to build a sports car and considered becoming a bookmaker, who inherited a stud farm and found in a retired racehorse the idea that would define his life, built that.

Editorial Note: This profile is based on original reporting, including direct communication with Cyrus Poonawalla and his team to ensure a comprehensive perspective, FinancialExpress.com corroborated this information with public records and third-party sources. This content is not sponsored, and FinancialExpress.com retains full editorial independence and final authority over all editorial decisions.