Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla, Chairman of Poonawalla Group which includes the privately owned Serum Institute of India, India’s top biotech company and the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold globally (more than 1.3 billion doses).

In 1966 Dr. Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India (SII) which launched its first therapeutic anti-tetanus serum within two years, and began producing the anti-tetanus vaccines.

By 1974 Serum Institute introduced the DTP vaccine, which protects children from diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis, followed by an anti-snake-venom serum for snakebites in 1981.

In 1989 Serum Institute began the production of its Measles Vaccine M-Vac and within a year Serum Institute became the country’s largest vaccine manufacturer. In the 80s India was made self-sufficient for Tetanus, Diphtheria and Whooping Cough vaccines thanks to the production from Serum Institute.

In 1994, Serum Institute got accredited by the World Health Organization (WHO) to export vaccines from India and started supplying high quality vaccines to U.N. Agencies such as UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund), PAHO (Pan American Health Organization).

From the inception, Dr. Poonawalla’s primary concept was not only to make life-saving drugs and vaccines, which were in shortage in the country, but also to see that every child was protected. At that time his dictum was “Health for all by 2000 AD”. The resultant effort was the National Program of Immunization, which is largely dependent on the vaccines manufactured by Serum Institute and now that philosophy has proliferated worldwide to International U.N. Agencies.

By 1998 Serum Institute was exporting vaccines to over a 100 countries and by 2000 one out of every two children in the world was vaccinated by a vaccine of Serum Institute of India.

Dr. Poonawalla’s strong belief in “No Compromise with Quality” and willful commitment in “Health for All with affordable Vaccines” has today lead Serum Institute to become India’s leading biotech company and has now clearly emerged as the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by number of doses produced and sold (more than 1.3 billion doses) which includes Polio vaccine.

Adar Poonawalla is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Serum Institute of India (SII), a private family-owned business founded in 1966 by his father Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla. SII is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer by the number of doses produced and sold a year (1.5bn). By the end of 2021 SII will be producing more than 3 billion doses of vaccines per year, 1.5bn of which will be Covid vaccines.

Adar joined SII in 2001, after graduating from the University of Westminster in London. Then exporting its products to 30 countries, he focused on the company’s international market and ensuring new products were licensed and pre-qualified by the World Health Organization for supply to United Nations Agencies including UNICEF and PAHO.

Adar took over from his father as CEO in 2011, taking complete control of day-to-day operations of the company. In this role, Adar has focused on bringing down the prices of vaccines to make them affordable for developing communities, while leading SII to innovate and develop new vaccines against preventable diseases to protect lives around the globe. As a result of his mission to fight health inequality by making access to vaccines more equitable, Adar has since expanded SII’s reach to supply over 170 countries with life-saving vaccines today.

Adar continues to lead the expansion of SII, developing affordable vaccines for global outbreaks – most currently the Covid-19 vaccine – and for preventable diseases, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. SII has produced and distributed over 280 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine to 70 countries (as of June 2021) and is continuing to increase production month-on-month. Many new vaccines such as Rotavirus and Pneumococcal have been produced in his tenure.

Adar and his wife Natasha are the founders of the Villoo Poonawalla Charitable Foundation, launched in 2012 to improve lives through a focus on increasing education, healthcare, safe water and environmental sanitation. Today in Pune, where SII is based, the Foundation has eight schools with over 10,000 children being educated and a charitable hospital. It also picks up and processes city waste to mitigate its impact on the health of local populations and provides clean drinking water at 30 locations.

Adar is the founder of Poonawalla Fincorp, a fast-growing digital non-banking financial company established in 2019 and headquartered in Pune, India.

Adar is a former board member of GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance focused on helping vaccinate the world’s children against deadly and debilitating infectious diseases.

Adar has been recognized with a number of accolades over the years, most recently Fortune’s Greatest Leaders (2021), Economic Times Entrepreneur of the Year (2021), Hurun National Icon of Philanthropy (2019), Indian of the Year – CSR Category (2020), Forbes India Leadership Awards GenNext Entrepreneur (2018) and CNBC Asia’s Corporate Social Responsibility (2018).

In 2017, he was appointed by the Indian Prime Minister as Brand Ambassador for Swachh Bharat, a country-wide campaign initiated by the Government of India to improve waste management.

Natasha Poonawalla is the Executive Director of Serum Institute of India, one of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers by volume. She also serves as Chairperson of Serum Life Sciences, a newly-established business focused on developing, producing and supplying pandemic vaccines, and works on creative and business strategy for Cyrus Poonawalla Group companies.

Additionally, Natasha is Chairperson of the Villoo Poonawalla Foundation, her family’s foundation, which was launched in 2012 to improve lives through a focus on increasing education, healthcare, safe water and environmental sanitation. The Foundation invests in a wide range of social projects to help advance the life outcomes of underprivileged communities in India, including establishing its own schools to provide much-needed education, and investing in clean drinking water and a large-scale sanitation program in the city of Pune.

Natasha serves as the Director of the Poonawalla Science Park, Netherlands, is Chair of the British Asian Children’s Protection Fund for India, and is a member of the British Asian Trust’s India Advisory Council.

Passionate about business, philanthropy, fashion and design, Natasha holds an M.Sc. in Organisational Behaviour from the London School of Economics.