Anti-Covid vaccines: the Serum Institute of India, a sham success
The anti-Covid Covishield vaccine manufactured by the Serum institute of India, owned by a Parsian family in southern India.
AP - Dar Yasin
Text by: Mounia Daoudi Follow
6 mins
The world's leading manufacturer of anti-Covid vaccines, the Serum Institute of India belongs to a Parsian family in southern India, a community that is now in decline.
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The Covid-19 pandemic and the vaccine supply difficulties have reminded us of how much
India was a key player
in the global health sector.
The Serum Institute of India, the world's leading vaccine manufacturer, is just one example.
It is the property of a Parsian family from the south of the country, a community which gave India the jewels of its industry, but whose decline today seems irremediable.
Interview with Jean-Joseph Boillot, advisor to Iris, author of
China, India and Africa will make the world of tomorrow
published by Odile Jacob.
RFI: The Serum Institute of India and its ability to provide anti-Covid vaccines to the world have made the headlines in recent months. This group is owned by a family, the Poonawalla, little known until then. Was this also the case in India
?
Jean-Joseph Boillot:
The Poonawalla family is certainly in India today, but this is out of all proportion to the Tata family.
The Tata group has been a multinational for forty years already.
The turnover is not comparable, for the moment.
The Serum Institute of India was still only a small company in 2001. And it is especially thanks to the Covid-19 crisis that we are starting to talk about this family and its young CEO Adrar Poonawalla.
The use of his Twitter and Facebook accounts has exploded in recent months.
It has become very popular in the country.
It is the great pride of India.
It is true that his company is today the largest producer of vaccines on the planet, not in terms of value but rather quantity.
As in many industrial successes in India, the Serum Institute of India is linked to a family saga.
Poonwalla means in Hindi "the guy from Poona" and Poona, Pune in French, is a town located about a hundred kilometers from Bombay.
This is where a whole bunch of old Bombay industrial families became distracted when the city became congested.
This is, for example, where the largest factory of the Tata group, which manufactures trucks and cars, is located.
It is a bit like the heart of Indian industrial capitalism.
► To read also:
India: "the guy from Poona" who made vaccines
Poonawalla is a family group like many others, which did not necessarily have a vocation to grow.
The company is founded by the father, Cyrus, who in reality is a trader like many Parsis (a community originally from Persia whose religion is Zoroastrianism and which fled the persecutions of the dominant Shiite Islam, editor's note).
It is a community that has gradually established itself in the economic and industrial sphere in India.
The Poonawalla group went through much the same process.
It is run today by a private foundation, just like the
Tata group
, a
charity trust,
so that it does not get out of family control.
It is a mixture of both philanthropy, paternalism and predatory capitalism that makes it very difficult to understand and read these groups.
The Serum Institute of India is however listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange.
In France, it is difficult to understand that one can be black and white.
And that everything does not come down to this opposition of opposites.
Parsi groups are both philanthropy - they are very socially committed -;
paternalism, because they are family groups;
of capitalism, because they are quoted on the stock exchange and that it is necessary to make profitable the capital which one borrows and also of opportunism.
This was the case with Cyrus Poonawalla who saw in the manufacture of millions of vaccines for India - he did not originally think of exporting - a business opportunity.
It is reminiscent of the United States where powerful Protestant schools are behind American capitalism.
They do philanthropy, but that doesn't prevent them from having formidable businessmen.
Bill Gates is the perfect example.
This is also the case of Marc Zuckerberg, the boss of Facebook
What is the weight of the Parsis today in Indian capitalism
?
The Parsis are fairly confined to the Bombay region.
Part of the community was settled in Calcutta, but it rather collapsed in this city.
It is a community that has established itself in business.
We talk a lot about the Tata group, but there is also the Birla group.
These families carved out the lion's share of Indian industry in the 1960s and 1970s.
It was in 1966 that Cyrus Poonawalla founded the Serum Institute of India.
The problem today is that this community is declining demographically in a dizzying fashion.
She can no longer reproduce.
Today, economically and demographically, the era of time is no longer in the Parsis.
The Serum Institute of India gives the impression that they are coming back to the fore, which is not true.
Today the large groups which pilot Indian capitalism are more Hindu groups, even Hindu, like the Relliance group, owned by a family of Marwaris.
They are hard-core capitalists from Gujarat.
The Marwaris are "the men of the desert of death".
The Parsis are no longer at the forefront today.
► To read also: India: the last fight of the Parsis
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