The Patient Healer

PREPARING CIPLA TO COMPETE IN A COMPLEX WORLD WHILE PRESERVING THE PHARMA COMPANY’S ETHOS IS THE CHALLENGE THAT SAMINA VAZIRALLI HAS HAPPILY ACCEPTED

- Aveek Datta

Nestled a few metres away from a bustling thoroughfare in central Mumbai is the office where it all began for Cipla, one of India’s oldest pharmaceutical companies. Founded by scientist Khwaja Abdul (KA) Hamied in 1935, the pharma major is an extension of his nationalistic spirit through which he wanted to serve people by making affordable medicines for the masses.

On a sultry October afternoon, standing in front of the imposing building in central Mumbai, Yusuf Khwaja (YK) Hamied—the company’s non-executive chairman who, at 81, is just a year younger than Cipla— points to the ground where he’s standing and proudly asserts that Mahatma Gandhi once stood there.

YK Hamied (ranked 60 on the 2017 Forbes India Rich List with a net worth of $2.62 billion) is as illustrious as his father, who was not only a disciple of Gandhi but also well-known to the man who led India’s freedom struggle. The son took on the might of leading pharma firms in the quest to sell affordable life-saving drugs for those suffering from AIDS in the developing world at a minimal cost of $1 per day. Other manufacturers sold the same drugs at around $12,000 per patient per year.