A stud business is measured over seasons rather than race days. Bloodlines, land, skilled people and records connect each crop of foals to the next. In India, the official side of that work is handled by the Stud Book Authority of India (SBAI); the commercial side can be seen in how a long-established farm describes its own operation.
The registry
The SBAI describes itself as the nodal agency for the registration of breeding establishments, Thoroughbred stallions, Thoroughbred mares and newly born Thoroughbred foals in India. It maintains identification details of Thoroughbred horses and approves names for racing horses. Its published functions include registering and keeping records of coverings, births, deaths, movements, pregnancy, foal casualties, ownership details and microchip implants, and issuing passports and export certificates when required.
The authority publishes a Return of Mares annually and the Indian Stud Book and Stallion Register every four years; its website currently offers Indian Stud Book Volume XIX. It also provides pedigree sheets and parentage confirmation for newborn horses, publishes the results of pattern races run in India and produces the catalogue for the Royal Western India Turf Club’s annual auction sale, which it says is held at the club’s Pune premises in the second week of February. The annually elected committee of the RWITC is also the committee of the SBAI.
A farm measured in decades
Poonawalla Stud Farms says it was established as the Poona Stud Farm in 1946 by the late Soli A. Poonawalla, with about a dozen mares and one stallion, Fitz Clarence (GB). The Pune farm is divided into three units: two youngstock divisions at Hadapsar and Theur, about 10 km and 24 km from Pune, and a breeding division at Theur. A second property, the Poonawalla Kunigal Stud Farm, is in Bangalore.
According to the farm, it currently stands 140 broodmares and four resident stallions in Pune: Territories, Mutasaabeq, Satono Impresa and Leitir Mor. Excellent Art, Chindit and Baratti stand at the Kunigal property, and the Indian Stud Book’s website separately records Excellent Art (GB) joining its Indian Hall of Fame Stallions. The farm says the majority of yearlings it produces each year are sold, with the family keeping a handful to race.
The farm also publishes its own record. It says it has won 15 Champion Breeders’ Awards from the Turf Authorities of India and that, as of 9 October 2026, it had bred the winners of 726 Group races and 388 Classics across India, including 10 Indian Derbies and 71 Indian Classics. It describes itself as the highest stakes-earning establishment in the country, with more than 1,050 home-breds earning stakes above Rs 1 million and total stakes of Rs 3 billion. These are the farm’s own figures; Equanine has not checked them against race records.
Equanine’s reading
- Registration with the SBAI records identity and events in a horse’s life. It is not a welfare assessment or a valuation.
- The sequence from covering records to the annual Return of Mares and the February sale catalogue shows how official records run through a breeder’s commercial calendar.
- Performance claims made by any farm, including those above, should be attributed and checked against official race records where a buying or breeding decision depends on them.
