Krishna Ella: The Life path of Tamil farmers son successed in developing India’s indigenous covid vaccine

The Rise of Covaxin

His 25 year old company, Bharat biotech manufactured Covaxin. That means, the vaccine was developed out of killed coronaviruses, which when administered, allowed immune cells to recognize the dead virus, prompting the immune response against the virus.

Adar Poonawalla, whose company, SII (Serum Institute of India) which is the world’s largest manufacturer of vaccines claimed that only three vaccines in the world had passed all the scientific evaluations with others only “safe like water”. Poonawalla’s announcement came as soon as the government accepted Covishield and Covaxin for emergency use.

They were the inventor of the Covishield vaccine, the Indian version of the popular Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. Later, While Ella and Poonawalla found out their differences they issued a joint statement. Covaxin’s future was uncertain after the company sought beneficiaries of the vaccine to sign a consent form. It was said that the company would compensate if they suffer any serious reaction to the vaccine.

Beginning from January 16, Covaxin found it difficult to get into takers as India rolled out the world’s largest vaccination drive. Only about 2.3 percent of the doses delivered was used in Karnataka. Rest of them were lying in storage.

“Remembering people criticising us, saying our data is not transparent, not in the public domain, I am today proud to say that our data are in the public domain in six publications,” Ella said in a video message posted on March 3. “If people have got patience, they should read those articles.”

When it announced its interim analysis of the phase 3 trials, which exhibited that the vaccine had an 81 percent efficacy against the virus. The vaccine received a much needed push after Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister took Covaxin as India embarked on its second phase.

In his earlier collaboration with Forbes India, Ella spoke about his record as a vaccine maker as an evidence to his credibility, “Bharat Biotech was the first company to identify, purify and sequence Chikungunya during the 2006 epidemic in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. We were also the foremost company in the world to predict, work and file the patent on the Zika vaccine before the US and WHO [World Health Organization]​ recognised the problem,” he had said, combining that ninety percent of Bharat Biotech’s vaccines are sold in “lower-middle-income countries”in a cost friendly manner. “We fervently work towards successful development of efficacious vaccines for neglected diseases.”

About Krishna Ella

Krishna Ella, an Indian scientist and entrepreneur hails from Thiruthani, Tamil Nadu. He is the Managing Director, founder and chairman of Bharat Biotech International Limited. He is also one of the people to give India its native COVID-19 vaccine.

After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Ella took effect as a research faculty at the Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston.

 He was born into a farmer’s family in 1969. He gained a bachelor’s degree from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. Later he went to Bangalore for a Master’s degree at the University of Agricultural Sciences. On a Rotary fellowship he finished his masters from University of Hawaii.

Ella stepped into his career by joining the pharmaceutical and life sciences company Bayer, a as part of its agricultural division. However he flew to the United States to seek his education.

“There were no businessmen, entrepreneurs or professionals in the family, only farmers. After my schooling, I decided to study agriculture [at Bengaluru’s University of Agricultural Sciences], which my father did not approve of. He felt nobody became a farmer just by studying agriculture! But I got interested in the subject and wanted to be a farmer,” Ella told Rediff in 2011.

Later on Ella returned to India and established a small lab Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad. The company created its Hepatitis B vaccine at a rate of ₹10 per dose and delivered across 350-400 million doses to more than 65 countries in 1999.

In 1996, Ella recommended setting up a biotech knowledge park (now called Genome Valley) to N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Krishna Ella’s company ranked first to produce a preservative free vaccine (Revac-B mcf Hepatitis B Vaccine), and introduced India’s first cell cultured Swine Flu vaccine. They also produced the world’s most inexpensive Hepatitis vaccines. Bharat Biotech became first in the world to discover a vaccine for the Zika virus.

Mates of Krishna Ella call him a soft-spoken scientist who has dedicated his life to working hard and dreaming big. “You cannot come this far without quality, enthusiasm and unshakable confidence in your science, and Dr Ella has those qualities in plenty,” says Rakesh Kumar Mishra, director of the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) in Hyderabad.

Covaxin became a huge big victory for Ella and is expected to drive Bharat Biotech as one of the leading vaccine makers of the world. It is just one of the many pillars that the research scientist has seen in his entrepreneurial journey.

It has been a long voyage from Thiruthani to Hyderabad. His journey is just yet to start all over again.