Adar Poonawalla

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Adar Poonawalla is an Indian billionaire businessman who is the CEO and owner of the worlds 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 Indias first COVID-19 vaccine, Covishield, which was produced with the help of the University of Oxford and pharmaceutical company, AstraZeneca. Adar Poonawalla with his employees delivering the first lot of Covishield vaccine.Adar Poonawalla was born in Pune, Maharashtra, and attended The Bishops School, Pune till he was ten years old. Later, he was sent to London to complete his formal education. He earned a bachelors 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 fathers supervision and joined the Serum Institute of Indias board of directors in 2005. In 2011, he became the CEO of Serum Institute of India. Adar Poonawalla at the Serum Institute of India lab.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.Adars 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. Villoo Poonawalla Memorial Hospital Villoo Poonawalla English Medium School.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. A worker cleaning garbage from the streets under the Adar Poonawalla Clean City initiative.On 31 May 2021, he was appointed as the chairman of Magma Fincorp Limited, a Mumbai-based non-banking finance company.The Poonawallas 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.