Mumbai: Serum Institute of India CEO Adar Poonawalla, ET’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2020, has said vaccine makers should be allowed to ‘perform without price restrictions’ and called for the biotech industry to be given the same benefits that were given to the IT sector two decades ago.
In an interview to ET, Poonawalla identified his decision to manufacture and stockpile Covishield doses before knowing whether the AstraZeneca/Oxford University vaccine trials would be successful as the biggest risk that he took last year, and one that has allowed his company to distribute the vaccine in large numbers in India and globally.
“If the biotech industry is also given similar benefits that were given to the IT industry 20 years ago, can you imagine what it will do to the biotech vertical on the whole?” he said . “Today you have great institutions like Wipro, TCS, Infosys, etc. all because of the boost and financial incentives that the IT industry got...Perhaps one day, even the biotech companies can become as big and successful.”
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