Yusuf Hamied

Yusuf Khwaja Hamied is an Indian chemist and billionaire businessman, chairman of Cipla, the generic pharmaceuticals company founded by his father in 1935. He is best known internationally for breaking the pricing of HIV/AIDS medicines — offering a triple-drug cocktail at a dollar a day when branded versions cost many times more — and for his part in shaping India's patent law and its generics industry. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan in 2005 and is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy. ¹

Hamied was born on 25 July 1936 in Vilnius, then in Poland, and raised in Bombay. His father, Khwaja Abdul Hamied, was an Indian Muslim scientist who founded Cipla; his mother, Luba Derczanska, was a Russophone Lithuanian Jew; the two had met as students in Berlin, and Yusuf grew up in a deeply secular household. ^{1 2} He was educated at the Cathedral and John Connon School and St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, went to England in 1954, and took a BA and a PhD in chemistry at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he still keeps his student notebooks for developing drug syntheses. ¹ His own position on his mixed inheritance is on record — asked by a Times of India editor in 1992 for comment 'as a Muslim leader' on the Bombay riots, he answered by pointing to his Jewish mother, and he heavily supported the reconstruction of the Shaar Hashamaim Synagogue in Thane in her memory. ³ He is married to Farida, has no children, and lives in London and Mumbai; his younger brother M. K. Hamied is Cipla's non-executive vice-chairman. ¹

Hamied joined Cipla and led it for over five decades, announcing his retirement as managing director in 2013 after 52 years while remaining chairman. In 1961 he founded the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association, which lobbied for the process-only patent regime of the 1970 Indian Patents Act that made India's generics industry possible. ¹ In 2001 he electrified global health by offering AIDS drug cocktails at US$1 per day — a price that later fell to 20 cents — and he pioneered multi-drug combination pills and paediatric formulations for diseases of poor countries. ¹ He has been a major benefactor of Cambridge chemistry — the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, the Yusuf Hamied 1702 Chair and the Hamied Scholars Programme bear his name — and of IISER Pune. ¹ Forbes estimated his net worth at US$5.7 billion in October 2024. ¹

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