Chairman and Managing Director, Bharat Biotech International Limited

Dr. Krishna Ella Graduated from University of Agriculture Science and Ph.D, from University of Wisconsin-Madison (1987-1992) and returned back to India in 1996 to start Bharat Biotech along with his wife Suchitra Ella.

Bharat Biotech believes in working on neglected diseases since many neglected diseases turns out to be a pandemic disease. Bharat Biotech being located India working on future problems of pandemic. The company has developed more than 16 vaccines and producing highest number of viral vaccines in the developing world (11 vaccines), Bharat Biotech was the first company in the developing world to develop Rotavirus vaccine ROTAVAC ® and also the first company in the world to develop Typhoid Conjugate Vaccine TYPEBAR TCV®. Bharat Biotech sold more than 9 Billion doses of vaccines all over the world.

The company also done a human challenge studies at Oxford for TYPEBAR TCV®. Bharat Biotech received more than 300 million dollars as a Grant from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Welcome Trust and many Governments for the various clinical programmes. Bharat Biotech is the only company from the developing world having carried out clinical trials in more than 6,00,000 volunteers and conducted clinical trials in more than 8 countries.

BBIL was the first company to file a global patent on Chikungunya and Zika Virus vaccine in the world. On our efforts to control the COVID-19 we are working on three difference platform technologies and two of them have already completed animal challenge studies and in various phases of clinical trials.

Most recently Bharat Biotech has been working on the development of three COVID-19 vaccine candidates, two of which are international collaborations with University of Wisconsin-Madison and Thomas Jefferson University. The third is an indigenous vaccine development project in collaboration with ICMR. Covaxin™ is India’s 1st indigenous vaccine developed against COVID-19. The strain of SARS-CoV-2 used in this has been isolated from ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune. The vaccine has received an approval for phase-I and phase- II human trials by the Drug Controller General of India (DGCI) and is under phase-2 clinical trials at present.