"Forbes Richest Billionaire's' List released in March 2014 listed Dr. Poonawalla as the 10th richest person in India and 295th in the world with a net worth of $ 4.9 billion".
Early Career
Born into a family whose decades-old ties to India’s horse racing circuit through the family's owned Poonawalla Stud Farms, by age 20, Dr. Poonawalla realized that horse racing had "no future in the socialist India of the time." And first experimented with cars. along with his school friend he built a $120 prototype sports car modeled on the D-type Jaguar. But producing it on a commercial basis required more money than they had. Dr. Poonawalla abandoned the idea, realizing that making a product for the masses, rather than India's elite, would be a smart move.
A chance conversation with a vet at the farm led Dr. Poonawalla into vaccines. At the time, the farm's retired horses were donated to government-owned Haffkine Institute in Mumbai, which made vaccines from horse serum.
Dr.