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Cipla creating legacy with healthy dose of growth
Business Standard
|July 28, 2023
“Never again will India be starved of essential drugs,” Cipla founder Dr Khwaja Abdul Hamied famously said. His next generation ensured the world never lacked access to essential medicines.
His son, the iconic Yusuf Khwaja Hamied, a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Cambridge University, joined Cipla as a research officer after his father died in 1972. He became managing director (MD) in 1976.
Yusuf, now 87, was both famous and infamous for his tirade against giant drug innovators as he sold expensive AIDS drugs cheaply in Africa. His copycat drugs shaped the future of Indian pharma, which rose to become a global generic (copycat) drug manufacturer.
One in every six pills consumed anywhere in the world today is made by an Indian firm. Yusuf was worshipped in Africa because he sold AIDS drugs at one-tenth of their price. People who know him say that the Hamieds were never ‘wealth-minded’.
This story is from the July 28, 2023 edition of Business Standard.
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