THE VACCINE CHAMPIONS

With their extraordinary foresight, initiative and courage, Covid vaccine manufacturers Krishna Ella of Bharat Biotech and Adar Poonawalla of Serum Institute helped India avert a certain health catastrophe. The inside story of how they did it

- RAJ CHENGAPPA

They are a study in contrasts. Krishna Ella, 66, is the son of an agriculturist from Tamil Nadu who aspired to be one himself till his father told him he would be better off getting a degree and acquiring other skill sets. So, Ella first worked in a multinational agri-chemicals company before securing a fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in plant pathology at a US uNIVersity. After getting his PhD in the subject, he moved on to molecular biology, specialising in studying cells at the DNA level. That got him interested in vaccinology. In 1996, with his wife Suchitra keen on returning to India, he decided to set up a firm in Hyderabad that would research and manufacture safe and affordable vaccines mainly for childhood diseases. Bharat Biotech International Ltd (BBIL) was born, and Ella worked hard to establish himself as a niche innovator of repute.

Adar Poonawalla, 40, on the other hand, was to the manner born and at an early age had a fleet of ritzy cars to ferry him around. His father, Cyrus Poonawalla, began his career as a racehorse breeder in Pune. In 1966, he set up the Serum Institute of India (SII) to manufacture vaccines inexpensively and then went on to grow the facility into one of the world’s largest. Adar joined the family business in 2001 after completing his education at a private school in England and getting a degree in business management from the UNIVersity of Westminster. In 2011, he was anointed CEO and in the past decade has expanded the business to 140 countries. Now, 85 per cent of SII’s revenues (Rs 5,200 crore in 2019-20) come from the overseas market.