Cyrus Poonawalla
CYRUS POONAWALLA

Chairman & Managing Director of Serum Institute of India

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.

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.