IN THE 85 YEARS he has been around, Cyrus Poonawalla has almost certainly touched a billion lives. And, with purpose.

Not counting the 1.6 billion Covid-19 vaccines that his company, Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd (SIIPL), manufactured and helped administer during the pandemic, Poonawalla’s vaccines — from pentavalent to hexavalent — have found their way into generations of Indians since the early 1960s. Today, his vaccines reach some of the remotest corners, from Africa to South America.

It all began with a veterinary doctor’s advice. Poonawalla came from a family of horse breeders. The vet suggested to him that horse serum could help produce vaccines on a mass scale and that the horses from his stables, which were retired and sent to a government hospital, could help with that. Horse serum is used to create vaccines for diphtheria, tetanus, and scarlet fever.

That prompted the 25-year-old Poonawalla to enter vaccine manufacturing. He founded SIIPL in 1966. In 1968, the company launched its first therapeutic anti-tetanus serum before producing anti-tetanus vaccines. Since then, SIIPL has grown into a global monolith manufacturing vaccines for polio, DTP (diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis), MMR, hepatitis B, rotavirus, pneumococcal disease (Pneumosil), HPV (Cervavac), Covid-19, and malaria (R21/Matrix-M).

According to the latest available annual figures, SIIPL posted revenues of ₹9,715 crore and profit of ₹4,631 crore in FY25. A year before that, the numbers stood at ₹9,549 crore and ₹4,278 crore, respectively, with a profit margin of 47%. “Over the past 4-5 years, SIIPL has been funding investments in subsidiaries [that are not consolidated], and other companies of the Poonawalla group,” ratings agency Crisil said in a report in February. “Total exposure in the form of investments formed nearly 33% of tangible net worth. SIIPL will continue to make sizeable investments to support growth in various business segments of the Poonawalla group, given its robust cash-generating ability and role as an incubator company for other business ventures.”

Cars... and then vaccines

But vaccines weren’t really Poonawalla’s initial plan. With a school friend, he experimented with cars, building a $120 prototype sports car, modelled on the D-type Jaguar. But producing it commercially required more funding, so Poonawalla abandoned the idea and realised building for the masses was the way forward.

By 1974, SIIPL introduced the DTP vaccine for children. In 1981, it released an anti-venom serum for snakebites. Thanks to SIIPL’s production scale, India became self-sufficient in tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough vaccines in the ’80s. In 1989, the company also began producing its measles vaccine, M-Vac. Within a year, it became the country’s largest vaccine manufacturer.

In 1994, SIIPL was also accredited by the WHO to export vaccines from India and began supplying high-quality vaccines to U.N. agencies such as Unicef and PAHO (Pan American Health Organization).

Meanwhile, by 2001, son Adar joined his father’s business after completing his studies. Within a decade, he would go on to play a crucial role in SIIPL’s acquisition of Dutch vaccine maker Bilthoven Biologicals. It gave the company the technology to make injectable polio vaccines, then available with just three producers globally.

Soon followed the acquisition of the Czech arm of U.S.-based firm Nanotherapeutics for nearly ₹500 crore, helping increase polio vaccine production capacity to more than 200 million doses. It made SIIPL the world’s largest maker of injectable polio vaccines. Today, it generates most of its revenues from exports. “Exports formed about 72% of its standalone operating revenue in fiscal 2025, with the domestic market accounting for the balance 28%,” the Crisil report noted. “A significant proportion of exports is to emerging countries in Asia and Africa.”

Poonawalla has been ranked eighth with a net worth of ₹2,18,724 crore ($22.97 billion) in 2026, according to Fortune India’s study of India’s Top 100 Billionaires.

The next-gen

Today, the senior Poonawalla has handed over much of the operational role to Adar. While his father visualised and executed the idea of ‘Make In India for the world’ long before it became a national catchphrase, the Adar era has ushered in a period of diversification for the Cyrus Poonawalla Group of companies. In his personal capacity, Adar has also taken the group into two of India’s obsessions: Bollywood and cricket. While that may contrast with how Poonawalla built his business — until almost a decade ago, the group had comprised only SIIPL — it is only natural for the unlisted, cash-rich pharma company to look for new avenues in the fastest-growing large economy, amid global uncertainties.

Adar’s first investment outside the vaccine business came in 2015, around the same time the group was considering selling a stake in SIIPL to private equity. While that plan was later shelved, Poonawalla invested in Mumbai-based omnichannel retail pharmacy chain Wellness Forever, which has close to 400 stores. In FY25, it posted revenues worth ₹1,500 crore and is the third-largest pharmacy and retail chain.

Then came the investment in Mumbai-based microfinance company Svasti Microfinance. Poonawalla followed up the initial investment in Svasti with numerous rounds of funding, as late as March this year, when the company raised some ₹47 crore. Svasti has around 220,000 customers across 150 branches and a loan portfolio of ₹469 crore.

The Svasti investment, in many ways, prompted the family to set up Poonawalla Finance, an NBFC, in 2019. By 2021, through his company, Rising Sun Holdings Pvt. Ltd, Poonawalla acquired Kolkata-based Magma Fincorp for ₹3,456 crore and renamed it Poonawalla Fincorp. Today, Poonawalla Fincorp serves as the group’s finance arm and has over 7 million customers, with an AUM exceeding ₹55,000 crore. The company has a market capitalisation of around ₹44,000 crore, compared with ₹24,000 crore in 2024 and ₹16,000 crore in 2021.

“Poonawalla Fincorp’s transformation into a diversified retail lender has moved beyond the investment phase,” brokerage firm Motilal Oswal noted in August. “The newer businesses have attained meaningful scale and are emerging as incremental growth drivers, supported by a wider distribution footprint, improving digital capabilities and disciplined execution. As the portfolio becomes more diversified across products, customer segments, and collateral types, we expect growth to become more resilient and earnings quality to improve.”

In 2025, the group sold an insurance subsidiary, Magma General Insurance Ltd (formerly Magma HDI General Insurance Company Ltd), along with Celica Developers and Jaguar Advisory Services to Patanjali and DS Group for ₹4,500 crore. This year, the Adar Poonawalla Family Office invested ₹700 crore in Inox Clean Energy, valuing the integrated renewable energy platform at ₹70,000 crore.

Meanwhile, in December 2021, Adar invested in Wakau Interactive, a subsidiary of JetSynthesys Pvt. Ltd, a digital content and technology company. In October 2024, he pumped in ₹1,000 crore for a 50% stake in Karan Johar-led Dharma Productions. With India’s viewing habits now shifting to mobile phones, the Dharma acquisition also opens a massive content library for Poonawalla.

This year, the Poonawalla family office bought a 20% stake in auction house AstaGuru. Coincidentally, in April, Cyrus Poonawalla made headlines when he bought Raja Ravi Varma’s iconic oil-on-canvas painting of Yashoda and Krishna for ₹167.20 crore — the highest-value sale of modern Indian art at an auction — at Saffronart’s Spring Live Auction.

The year also saw Adar, along with billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, acquiring Rajasthan Royals — the one-time Indian Premier League winner — for $1.65 billion. Adar will own around 18% in the venture. “IPL has shown how a two‑month tournament can become a year‑round sports platform, monetising attention across broadcast, streaming, sponsorships, and live experiences, not just match outcomes,” Archit Varshney, senior manager, equity research, Kotak Mahindra AMC, said in a report. “In financial terms, IPL teams increasingly resemble infrastructure assets more than traditional sports clubs.”

Yet, the diversification doesn’t mean that the Poonawallas are taking their eyes off the core business. Last month, the University of Oxford and SIIPL started the world’s first human trial of a vaccine developed to protect against the Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. The vaccine, called ChAdOx1 BDBV, has been developed by the Oxford Vaccine Group with support from global health partners.

A few months before that, SIIPL also entered into a licence agreement with the University of Oxford, through Oxford University Innovation, to support the development and manufacture of the new malaria vaccine candidate R78C, based on two Plasmodium falciparum blood-stage antigens (RIPR and CyPRA), for use in clinical settings. Last year, SIIPL also agreed to collaborate and create the world’s largest investigational-ready reserve of a Nipah virus vaccine candidate, in partnership with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the University of Oxford.

All that means one thing. Even if they have their eyes set on diverse segments, the Poonawallas will continue to remain one of India’s biggest hopes in case of a pandemic.