A jab at risk: Serum's quest to lead the world in Covid-19 vaccine race

It took a chance by ramping up capacity on vaccines when they were yet to be approved and is set to emerge a global winner

Nestled in one of the oldest industrial estates in the country, in Pune, the 50-year-old Serum Institute of India has hogged the limelight since the pandemic began, by winning a commitment to supply 3.2 billion doses for the multiple Covid-19 vaccines it is working on.

Large volumes are nothing new for the institute. It is the world’s largest vaccine maker by volumes. Nonetheless, 3.2 billion doses is more than double the 1.5 billion doses it produced last year.

(To put these numbers into context, if 70 per cent of the world’s population is to be vaccinated, around 11 billion doses