and we've completed our pandemic facility,  and that's what's doubled our capacity.

Adar Poonawalla is the CEO of Serum Institute of  India, the world's largest vaccine manufacturer.

We produced 1.9 billion doses in just 2021  after having committed only a billion doses,  

so we did double of what we had committed.

The company was established in 1966  after horse breeder Cyrus Poonawalla  

began to extract serum from his retired animals.

Controlling the extraction of serum, which  is used to create vaccines for diseases  

like tetanus and scarlet fever, allowed  him to produce cheaper vaccines locally.

In our country, we were dependent on  foreign medicines and drugs and vaccines;  

they were very expensive.

And he saw that as an opportunity.

But the company's entry into the local  market wasn't entirely smooth sailing.

In those days, getting permissions  and licenses was a huge hurdle.

My father, he had no track record, no  brand name, people didn't know him.

Even talent at that time, trained scientists, 40  years ago, 50 years ago was in a huge shortage.

Today, the Serum Institute's sprawling campus  spans 42 acres, or around 25 soccer fields,  

in the western Indian city of Pune, a  far cry from the early days when Cyrus  

operated out of a small laboratory  in the corner of his stud farm.

In the future, if there is another  pandemic or major outbreaks,  

we can rapidly produce a lot of  vaccine doses in three months,  

a billion doses across different technologies,  viral vector vaccines, messenger RNA vaccines.

So how exactly did the Serum  Institute of India grow into  

the world's largest vaccine manufacturer?

There were criticisms at the start of the pandemic  

that vaccine manufacturers were profiteering  from the pandemic, and the Serum Institute,  

fully owned by the Poonawalla family,  wasn't immune from the backlash.

It was far easier to get into,  compared to listed entities and  

others who have accountability to  their stakeholders and shareholders.

For me, it was easier to make a vaccine $3  and offer it at a very affordable price,  

for example, compared to others  who have to charge higher prices.

And they made billions of dollars in profits,  and I think they had every right to do so.

I think it was a fine line between profiteering  

and making a profit. It's important to  have that distinction between the two.

There will always be criticism, you know,  why did someone charge so much or whatever,  

but, you know, you have different cost points.

We could have charged higher  prices also. But we didn't.

We didn't want to sort of take  advantage beyond the point.

We just wanted to make a product  which is as accessible and affordable.

Even before the pandemic, the Serum Institute made  a name for itself with its affordable vaccines.

The tetanus vaccine was the  company's first product in 1967.

This was followed by antidotes for snake bites,  tuberculosis, measles, polio and the flu.

A breakthrough came in the mid-1980s  after it was accredited by the  

World Health Organization to supply  vaccines to United Nations agencies.

With the WHO prequalifying and approving  you, that was an opening up of sorts,  

for us as an opportunity to  go to all these countries.

Towards the end of the 20th century,  

the Serum Institute was the world's  largest producer of the measles vaccine,  

and more than half of the world's children  were vaccinated with at least one of its shots.

In 2012, the business expanded its  vaccine portfolio and manufacturing  

prowess with its first international  acquisition in the Netherlands.

By then, it was the world's fifth-largest  vaccines maker by volume, and it became  

the market leader a few years later,  accounting for 28% of global volume in 2019.

But the pandemic presented several  challenges for the quickly growing company.

Several factors led to delays in Serum  Institute of India's production pledges,  

including a fire at its Pune facility.

As a deadly second wave of the pandemic  swept through India in March of 2021,  

the government restricted  its Covid-19 vaccine exports,  

and the Serum Institute was blamed  for the global vaccine shortage.

The crisis abated as the Serum Institute ramped  up its production capacity in the months ahead.

But for Adar, the flak he  received convinced him that this,  

and any subsequent health crises, cannot be  solved by the pharmaceutical companies alone.

Perhaps I'm being naive, where I'm expecting  countries and leaders to come forward to sign  

a sort of treaty, which would at least compel them  to politically explain to their constituents why  

it is so important to share raw materials, vaccine  doses, have a harmonized regulatory platform.

It's more of a political commitment like  you've done on climate change and other areas.

While the pandemic may have been  Adar's biggest challenge as chief  

executive officer of the company, he had  two decades of experience to lean on.

Even though his father founded the company, Adar  wasn't handed the top role on a silver platter.

In his first decade at the company,  

Adar worked in numerous departments before  finally taking over the reins as CEO in 2011.

When I joined also 22 years ago, getting  access to capital was a major challenge.

I worked in every department and  particularly in marketing and sales  

and in exports because I wanted to  build the exports. And the company  

at that time was perhaps in 20 to 30  countries. Today, we're in 172 countries.

Fortunately, one of Adar's priorities as CEO was  to boost its vaccine manufacturing capabilities.

As CEO, I concentrated more on the  science and the manufacturing part  

I was able to understand where  the global demand was going.

That gave me the confidence to really  invest in capacity ahead of demand.

Adar says working his way up also allowed  him to refine his leadership style.

Initially, I think I was a sort of micromanager. I  

wanted to do everything myself,  I still do to a certain extent.

But when I realized that it wasn't  possible to grow beyond a certain point,  

including having multiple facilities globally,  I sort of changed my style to being more of a  

delegator and getting people that I could trust  to make decisions was challenging initially.

Decentralizing decision-making was key  if we were to expand in all these areas.

As the demand for Covid vaccines wanes,  

Adar has set his sights on growing the  company beyond its traditional markets.

We've been in these 170 countries,  

South America, the developing world  countries, African continent, Asia.

I'm looking at now expanding more with  

my portfolio of vaccines in  Europe and the United States.

This includes partnerships with pharmaceutical  and biotechnology companies, such as Britain and  

Sweden's AstraZeneca, America's Novavax,  and South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare.

For the first time, the African continent  will set up a manufacturing site.

So they have their own vaccines  in the case of a pandemic,  

and they don't have to rely  so much on other countries.

Before the pandemic, the WHO estimated  the global market value of vaccines was  

worth around $33 billion, or just 2%  of the overall pharmaceutical market.

And global consulting firm PwC says  vaccine demand will remain high as  

Covid-19 becomes endemic and new variants emerge.

We are looking at expanding our vaccine  portfolio including in the messenger RNA space.

We're building a capacity specifically  for handling these new technologies.

We have a partnership with the Greenlight, a U.S.  firm, which has got this technology platform, and  

we'll look at some of the new vaccines that might  be needed to be developed with that technology.

Adar says he's also been thinking proactively  about the global supply chain crisis.

We've made small acquisitions  

to strengthen our supply chain. We haven't been  importing a lot from China at all, in fact.

We import a lot of our raw materials from  Europe and the U.S. We're developing in India,  

suppliers who can now substitute what we're  importing from other parts of the world.

These acquisitions include a 50% stake in the  local subsidiary of German specialty glass  

maker Schott to better manage its supplies of  packaging products such as vials and syringes.

I'm quite frankly quite relieved that the  COVID pandemic is nearing the end because  

I can get back to vaccines in my pipeline that  I had been developing for the last few years.

Like HPV, malaria and some  other meningitis vaccines.