IN THE WORLD of pharmaceuticals, where profit margins often overshadow humanitarian concerns, Dr Yusuf Hamied stands as a towering figure of change.
The non-executive chairman of Cipla, a £2.4 billion generics manufacturer, has spent over six decades proving that science, business, and humanitarian values can coexist – and change millions of lives in the process.
Born into a family deeply rooted in India’s struggle for independence, Hamied’s father, Khwaja Abdul Hamied, was a disciple of Mahatma Gandhi and founded Cipla in 1935. When the patriarch passed away in 1972, Yusuf and his brother Mustafa inherited the business. Armed with a PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Cambridge, where he studied under Nobel laureate Lord Alexander Todd, Hamied returned to India with a vision to revolutionise the pharmaceutical industry.
The defining moment in Hamied's extraordinary career came in the late 1990s. As HIV/AIDS ravaged sub-Saharan Africa, Western pharmaceutical companies were charging around $15,000 annually for lifesaving antiretroviral treatments – an impossible sum for most patients.
Under his leadership, Cipla developed a groundbreaking three-drug combination therapy that could be produced at a fraction of the cost. By offering the treatment at just $350 per year – less than a dollar a day – Hamied not only undercut the monopolistic practices of Western pharma giants but also saved millions of lives in Africa alone.
The moment was immortalised in Dylan Gray's documentary Fire in the Blood, which Indian high commissioner to the UK Vikram Doraiswami referenced when addressing a function at Cambridge’s Christs College. “You will understand why I hold Yusuf Hamied in the highest personal esteem,” Doraiswami told the audience in May 2023. “He has made a difference to countless lives – and that is not something we can all tell our maker.”
His connection to Cambridge remains profound. Doraiswami was speaking at the opening new residential building named after Hamied, the first time an entire building has been named after an Indian at the 800-year-old university.
The four-storey residence for postgraduates and fellows, Yusuf Hamied Court, was funded by the charitable foundation set up by Hamied and his wife, Farida.
In 2011, he had the exceptional honour of having a bust of himself unveiled at Christs College, making him the second Indian since eminent scientist Dr Jagadish Chandra Bose to have such an honour.
Hamied has donated generously to Cambridge’s chemistry department in many areas, including the creation of the Todd-Hamied Meeting Room, named in honour of Lord Todd, and the Yusuf Hamied Laboratory for Chemical Synthesis & Catalysis, which opened in September 2015. A major gift from him in 2020 will support research and teaching for generations to come, in recognition of which the department has been renamed the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry until 2050.
In 2018, the Yusuf Hamied Fellowship Program was launched at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, fostering interdisciplinary research to tackle pressing public health issues in India. The program, which Hamied funds, aims to address challenges ranging from climate change and air pollution to antibiotic resistance and tuberculosis.
“Academics like to talk about theory, but I’m a scientist and what I’m interested in is implementation,” he said in November last year, as Columbia Mailman announced the 2024 Fellows. “We in India need the kind of help you can offer in America, not just with knowledge but with how to implement changes that will make a difference to the survival of all of us.”
Hamied has also supported Royal Society of Chemistry’s science education programme in India since 2014. The decade-long programme has seen over 35,000 teachers being trained across over 12,000 schools in India, and 2,265 students attending the Yusuf Hamied Chemistry Camps.
At 88, Hamied shows no signs of slowing down. While he has stepped back from day-to-day operations at Cipla, he remains deeply involved in research and development, particularly in addressing antimicrobial resistance, a looming global crisis.
“They’re estimating that if this is not controlled, five to 10 million lives would be lost in the next decade because the drugs will no longer be effective,” he told the GG2 Power List last year, the scientist in him speaking with clinical precision.
Hamied is also keenly interested in the future of personalised medicine and gene therapy. He has invested in Rnavate, a company co-founded by Nobel laureate Professor Sir Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Professor Sir Shankar Balasubramanian, a Cambridge professor renowned for his work on gene sequencing.
“Whatever Shankar and Venki are planning to do will be good for humanity,” he has commented, with characteristic optimism.
Even as he approaches his ninth decade, Hamied continues expanding his vision. Following conversations with Cambridge economist Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta, he’s now considering pharmacy’s role in addressing climate change.
“I am planning to set up a think tank of intellectuals who can address biodiversity, under somebody like Partha Dasgupta,” he said, adding: “I’ve already set up a group on biodiversity in India.”
The government of India honoured him with Padma Bhushan – the country’s thirds highest civilian award – in 2005. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry and was awarded honorary doctorates by the University of Cambridge and the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
