Cyrus Poonawalla on Disruptive Pricing

Poonawalla explicitly positions himself as a philanthropist throughout: 'our price is low, I've been giving vaccines at 50 cents a dose and nobody could compete with this'. Serum was pre-qualified by WHO and the UK's MHRA, on which basis the company could make three billion doses of vaccine, including substantial COVID production.

Poonawalla cites recent export milestones: just that week Serum had exported six million COVID doses to Australia and three million to New Zealand, with an American-subidiary contract to supply 100 million doses to those two markets and roughly two billion doses worldwide at peak pandemic. The numbers demonstrate how a private Indian company became a top-tier global public-health supplier —.

While Indian manufacturers like Serum partner with global pharmaceutical companies, NPR notes the Indian government simultaneously led a confrontation at the WTO, petitioning with South Africa to temporarily waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines. The idea was to lift 20-year patents and let companies like Serum manufacture generic versions quickly and cheaply.