Cyrus S Poonawalla, the chairman and MD of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, is the richest healthcare billionaire in the world with a wealth of $27 billion, as per the 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List
Cyrus Poonawalla, who was ranked at 261 ten years ago, now ranks 46th on the 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List. His wealth has increased 350% in the last 10 years
Cyrus Poonawalla of Serum Institute of India is the third richest Indian billionaire in the 2023 M3M Hurun Global Rich List. His wealth has increased 4% year-on-year
According to the M3M Hurun Global Rich List for the year 2023, the percentage of Indian billionaires in the global healthcare industry stands at 14.9%
Son of a horse breeder, Cyrus Poonawalla founded Serum Institute of India in 1966 and built it into the world's largest vaccine maker (by doses). He was conferred the honorary degree of Doctor of Science by Oxford University
Born into a family that owned Poonawalla Stud Farms, Cyrus Poonawalla realised at the age of 20 that racing had "no future in the socialist India of the time". He then experimented with cars
Cyrus Poonawalla built a $120 prototype sports car modelled on the D-type Jaguar along with a school friend. But producing it on a commercial basis required more money than they had, so he abandoned the idea
At a farm where retired horses were donated to Haffkine Institute, which made vaccines from horse serum, Poonawalla figured he could extract the serum from horses himself and produce cheaper vaccines
Cyrus Poonawalla's Serum Institute produces over 1.5 billion doses annually of a range of vaccines. It produces Covishield, the Covid-19 vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University
In 2022, Cyrus Poonawalla was conferred the Padma Bhushan, one of India's highest civilian honours. His son Adar Poonawalla, the CEO of Serum Institute, featured in Forbes Asia's Heroes of Philanthropy list
According to Forbes, Cyrus Poonawalla's net worth has jumped from $8.2 billion in 2020 to $22.4 billion in 2023. His assets include a majority stake in listed financial services firm Poonawalla Fincorp