Adar Poonawalla

Some Lesser Known Facts About Adar Poonawalla

• Adar Poonawalla is an Indian billionaire businessman who is the CEO and owner of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturers (in terms of the number of doses produced and sold worldwide), Serum Institute of India. The company was founded by his father, Cyrus Poonawalla, in 1966.

• Serum Institute of India (SII) is also responsible for producing India’s first COVID-19 vaccine, Covishield, which was produced with the help of the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca.

  

• Adar Poonawalla was born in Pune, Maharashtra, and attended The Bishop’s School, Pune till he was ten years old. Later, he was sent to London to complete his formal education. He earned a bachelor’s degree in BA (honors) in Business Management from the University of Westminister in 2002. He shared his experience from the university, and said-
  

  My memories at Westminster are of a nice learning environment and culture which taught me team building and interacting with peers, overall a great learning experience, for which I am always happy and grateful.”

• Adar spent ten years in London and after completing his graduation; he moved back to India in 2002 to join his family business of producing vaccines. He worked under his father’s supervision and joined the Serum Institute of India’s board of directors in 2005. In 2011, he became the CEO of Serum Institute of India.

  

• In 2017, the Serum Institute of India became the biggest vaccine-producing company in the world in terms of the number of doses. The company produced an average of 1.5 billion doses of vaccines for a number of diseases such as measles, polio, flu, etc.

• Under the leadership of Adar Poonawalla, SII witnessed remarkable growth as they expanded their supply to more than 145 countries in 2020 as compared to just 35 countries in 2005.

• Adar’s mother, Villoo Poonawalla, was a philanthropist. After her death in 2010, Adar took over the charity work, and in 2012, he started the ‘Villoo Poonawalla Foundation’ in memory of his late mother. The foundation focuses on improving the lives of underprivileged people in India by providing them education, healthcare, water, and sanitation facilities at an affordable price. The foundation has several sub-projects such as eight schools for over 10,000 students, a hospital, and several water treatment plants.
  

  

  

• In 2015, Adar Poonawalla launched an environmentally sustainable initiative titled Adar Poonawalla Clean City (APCC). The initiative focused on improving the ways in which solid waste was managed across the urban cities of India and how to make them more livable. Adar started the initiative from Pune and pledged to donate more than Rs. 100 crores from his own wealth for the expansion of the project to different cities. The project was appreciated by many influential and famous personalities of the country including Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India. In 2017, Adar was nominated as one of the brand ambassadors of the government initiative of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’.

  

• On 31 May 2021, he was appointed as the chairman of Magma Fincorp Limited, a Mumbai-based non-banking finance company.

• The Poonawalla’s have numerous properties across the country and in the world. The few prominent properties owned by them in Pune and Mumbai are the Adar Abad Poonawalla House, which is the official residence of the family. The house is a perfect blend of vintage and contemporary art and spreads on an area of 22 acres.

• The family also owns a farmhouse called Poonawalla Stud Farmhouse that covers approximately 247 acres of land and comes with a two-story holiday home.

  

• In 2015, the Poonawalla family spent an eye-watering price of Rs. 750 crores to acquire the Grade-III beach facing Lincoln House. The property is located on Breach Candy Road in South Mumbai, and it was the house of the Maharaja of Wankaner. In 1957, the US government bought the property for Rs. 18 lakhs to use it as a consulate house.

• In his leisure time, Adar loves to go on vacations with his family and his favorite holiday destinations are France and Italy.

• Adar is passionate about horse racing and has several horses in his stud farmhouse in Pune.

  

• Adar is a car enthusiast and has a fleet of supercars, sports cars, and luxury cars. His cousin brother, Yohan Poonawalla, is also a collector and has several vintage cars and classic cars in his collection.

  

• Apart from being a car collector, Adar also likes to fly at ease and he owns a Gulfstream G550. The aircraft is known for its speed and allows him to fly anywhere in the world in less than thirteen hours.

  

• On 17 May 2021, Adar Poonawalla offloaded his stake in Panacea Biotec through an open market transaction. According to BSE block deal data, Adar sold 31,57,034 scrips at a price of Rs. 373.85 per share, taking the value of the deal to Rs. 118.02 crores. These shares were bought by the Serum Institute of India (SII). ^[6]Mint

• Adar Poonawalla made headlines by making a deal to buy Aberconway House in London for approximately Rs. 1,444.4 crore in December 2023, making it the second-costliest in London for the year. The mansion was said to be acquired by Serum Life Sciences Ltd., a British subsidiary of the Poonawalla family’s Serum Institute of India. ^[7]The Telegraph ^[8]India Today

• In October 2024, he bought 50 per cent stakes in Karan Johar‘s Dharma Productions for over a thousand crore.