Serum’s Poonawalla to buy London home for $173 million: report

Entities owned by Indian billionaires are lapping up trophy properties in London, with Serum Institute’s “vaccine prince” Adar Poonawalla being the latest to join the list, the Financial Times reported.

Poonawalla is nearing a £138 million ($173 million) deal for London’s most expensive home sale of the year, the report said.

Incidentally, Ravi Ruia’s family office, part of the Essar Group, sealed the second biggest real estate deal of the year by acquiring Hanover Lodge for £113 million ($141.5 million), a Regent’s Park mansion that was linked to Russian property investor Andrey Goncharenko, the report said.

Serum Life Sciences, a UK arm of Poonawalla’s Serum Institute of India, will buy Aberconway House, a 25,000 sq. ft mansion in Mayfair, an affluent and prestigious area in central London near Hyde Park, from Dominika Kulczyk.

Kulczyk is the daughter of the late Jan Kulczyk, a businessman who was once the wealthiest individual in Poland.

Aberconway House is the second-most expensive home ever sold in London, FT reported, citing luxury property agents.

The grand red-brick mansion, situated in Grosvenor Square, was constructed by Henry Duncan McLaren, Baron Aberconway, an influential industrialist from the early 20th century.

The Poonawallas have “no plans” to move to the UK permanently, but “the house will serve as a base for the company and family when they are in the UK”, the report said, citing a person close to Serum Life Sciences.

The vaccine maker had in December 2021 pledged £50 million ($62.64 million) to the University of Oxford for a research campus that would also house the institute behind the AstraZeneca-Oxford covid-19 shot. The investment was again made through the Serum Life Sciences.