Yusuf Hamied

Yusuf Hamied’s Journey to date …

• Yusuf Hamied was introduced up in Mumbai and attended the Cathedral and John Connon College and Saint Xavier’s School. On the age of 18, he joined Cambridge and went on to acquire a PhD in chemistry in 1960 beneath the steering of Alexander Todd who’s a Nobel laureate
• After his doctorate, Hamied joined Cipla, a pharmaceutical firm based by his father Dr Khwaja Abdul Hamied in 1935
• He was made to work like every other worker, and within the preliminary years, he received Cipla to make API (lively pharmaceutical ingredient) which made it the primary Indian pharmaceutical firm to be self-sufficient in end-to-end drug manufacturing
• By the late sixties, he pioneered the event of over 30 bulk drug formulations. In 1972, he and his brother Mustafa inherited the enterprise after the loss of life of Hamied Sr. He was appointed as Managing Director of Cipla in 1976 and have become the Chairman in 1989
• In 1985, beneath his steering, Cipla grew to become the primary Indian pharma firm to get approval from the US Meals and Drug Administration (FDA) to arrange a manufacturing unit
• The Cipla patriarch has been instrumental within the improvement of multi-drug mixture tablets for tuberculosis, bronchial asthma and different illnesses affecting growing nations
• He guided the Mumbai-based drug maker within the improvement of paediatric formulations, notably for youngsters from a poor background
• Hamied has been on the forefront of the struggle in opposition to HIV/AIDS and have become a world movie star in 2001 when Cipla supplied the world’s first reasonably priced AIDS drugs on the unprecedented price of lower than a greenback a day
• Dr Hamied’s exemplary achievement got here as a blessing for these dwelling with the illness in Africa and compelled different high multinational pharma firms to massively scale back the costs of their antiretroviral medication
• Equally in 2012, a lot to the shock of different firms, he slashed the value of essential most cancers medication by as a lot as 75%
• The eight-decade-old pharma big as we speak has a presence in over 150 nations and sells over 1500 merchandise throughout varied therapeutic classes
• In the course of the Covid-19 pandemic, beneath his steering, Cipla launched medication to deal with sufferers affected by the illness, one in every of them being a generic model of Remdesivir for which the corporate tied up with Gilead Sciences
• After spending 52 years in constructing the corporate, Hamied hung up his boots as Cipla Managing Director in March 2013 and is at present the non-executive Chairman

Earlier than you go …

• Hamied’s rivals labelled him as a thief for making and promoting copies of their medication, however for tens of millions of sufferers in growing nations, he has been their Robin Hood
• In 2005, he was the recipient of the Padma Bhushan, one of many highest civilian awards in India, for his contribution to healthcare
• He received his first wage solely after finishing a yr though he was the son of the founder