The Real Vaccine Billionaires of Maharashtra

An Indian racehorse dynasty may be the world’s best hope for producing enough vaccine to end the pandemic

- Ari Altstedter

As chief executive officer of the Serum Institute of India, the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world, Adar Poonawalla can produce about 1.5 billion doses a year of almost any inoculation. He has machines that fill 500 glass vials every minute, and gleaming steel bioreactors almost two stories high that can make more than 10 million shots a month. He can claim, credibly, that he helps inoculate 65% of the world’s children, in more than 100 countries, against diseases such as measles and tuberculosis. And deep inside Serum’s lushly landscaped, 50-acre campus, about three hours inland from Mumbai, he’s already brewing the raw materials to make one of the leading experimental vaccines for the novel coronavirus at a scale that could make a serious difference to ending the pandemic.

But before getting into all that, the first thing Poonawalla wants to show me during a recent visit is his office, because it’s brand-new—and it’s a plane. Specifically, a converted Airbus A320. “This is kind of similar to Air Force One,” he says as he leads me through an onboard lounge, a 10-person boardroom, and, finally, in what was once coach, a bedroom that could easily be found in a five-star hotel. It’s all elegantly designed, vaguely art deco, and accessed through a luxe jetway with marble floors and carved wooden doors that’s connected to ground level by a dedicated elevator. How much did the remodeling cost? “Oh, nothing,” Poonawalla replies before revealing the figure: about $1 million.