#90

Cyrus Poonawalla

Source of wealth: Vaccines

84 years Male Healthcare 🇮🇳 IN

Net Worth

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Earnings per second

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Biography

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).

Headquartered in Pune city, close to Mumbai, Serum produces over 1.5 billion doses annually of a range of vaccines, including for measles, polio and flu.

Under his U.K.-educated son Adar, Serum's CEO, the company invested $800 million at the peak of the pandemic to build a new factory in Pune to make Covid-19 vaccines.

Poonawalla's assets include a majority stake in listed financial services firm Poonawalla Fincorp as well as a stake in The Ritz-Carlton hotel in Pune.

In 2023, his son Adar bought Aberconway House, a mansion in London's Mayfair, for 138 million pounds.

Perspective on their fortune

Gold

Everyday luxury

A Cyrus Poonawalla's fortune is equivalent to 189 of gold, but this may be difficult to value, as we don't usually have a handful of gold bars in our piggy bank.

A standard gold ring typically weighs between 4 and 7 grams. Let's say this one weighs 5 grams. It's usually 18k gold.

Based on today's gold price (not taking into account the jeweler's fee, shipping, or anything else), that gold ring would be worth $556.3

Cyrus Poonawalla could buy 50,279,170 gold rings. That's a lot of fingers and a lot of gifts!!

And if the number of rings is difficult to visualize, all these rings would need 9 trucks to transport them, But we can be almost certain that Cyrus Poonawalla will have enough left over to pay for the gas for those trucks.

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While billions of people struggle to access basic healthcare, education, and research, a single individual could fund entire national systems for centuries.

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Health

The price of life

Let's compare Cyrus Poonawalla's fortune with the healthcare spending of a huge country

Cyrus Poonawalla could fund the entire healthcare system of DR Congo with a population of over 105,800,000 of inhabitants for approximately 12.6 years.

But even if we compare their fortune to that of a rich country

At the other extreme, Cyrus Poonawalla could cover the health expenditure of Luxembourg, considered the world's most heavily invested health system, for 5.6 years

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Education

Buying the future

Lowest education spending

Cyrus Poonawalla could assume the entire cost of the education system of Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, with more than 243,000,000 inhabitants for 8.2 years.

Highest education spending

But not only could he assume the cost of a poor country, Luxembourg is considered the country with the highest per capita investment in education in the world, Cyrus Poonawalla could pay for it in full for 11.2 years.

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Research

The monopoly of progress

Lowest research spending

Cyrus Poonawalla could fully fund the state research budget of Pakistan, the fifth most populous country in the world with more than 260,000,000 of inhabitants, for 47.1 years.

Highest research spending

But even if we compare the total wealth of Cyrus Poonawalla with Israel, the country that currently invests the most per capita in research in the world, it could assume the total cost of the system for 1.1 years.