A ONE-OF-A-KIND COMBINATION: HORSE RACING/BREEDING AND VACCINE MANUFACTURING

A recent CNBC headline caught my attention: “How a horse breeder launched the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, by volume.” 

In 1966, Dr. Cyrus Poonawalla founded the Serum Institute on his Thoroughbred breeding farm in India, extracting serum from his retired racehorses.  The Serum Institute is currently the world’s most prolific vaccine manufacturer, with Adar Poonawalla as CEO.  Both the Serum Institute and Poonawalla Stud Farms are subsidiaries of the Cyrus Poonawalla Group, which encompasses businesses in horse racing and breeding, biotechnology, engineering, hotels/real estate, finance, and energy.

The Poona Stud Farm in India was founded in 1946 by the late Soli A. Poonawalla.  Today, it is known as the Villoo Poonawalla Greenfield Farm (also called Poonawalla Stud Farms) and is the leading breeder of Thoroughbreds in the country, with about 110 broodmares and 3 stallions.  Two of the stallions have Coolmore Stud lineage (sired by Galileo and Holy Roman Emperor) and the other stallion has English bloodlines (sired by Pivotal). 

It is truly a unique situation to have under the umbrella of a single company the foremost serum manufacturer globally and the leading racehorse entity in an entire nation.

Click here to access a 9-minute CNBC podcast on the Serum Institute.

Click here to access the Villoo Poonawalla Greenfield Farm website.

Click here to access the Cyrus Poonawalla Group website.

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