Yusuf Hamied

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Yusuf Khwaja Hamied is chairman of Cipla, a company founded by his father Khwaja Abdul Hamied. Yusuf is a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Christ's College, Cambridge. He fought large pharmaceutical companies to be able to provide generic AIDS drugs to people in poor countries. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India in 2005. He is an alumnus of the Cathedral and John Connon School. He is fondly called Yuku by his close friends. He is fond of Western Classical music and is close friends with the conductor Zubin Mehta.

"Mr. Hamied comes by this mix of motivations -- profit, social conscience and nationalism -- by birthright. His father was a follower of Mahatma Gandhi's brand of Indian nationalism whose family chipped in to send him to study chemistry in England, India's colonial master, in 1924. Instead, he changed ships and went to Germany, then the world's leader in chemicals. On a Berlin lake, he met a Lithuanian Jewish socialist -- Mr. Hamied's mother. They fled as Germany was shifting into Nazi hands, and the Chemical, Industrial and Pharmaceutical Laboratories, later known as Cipla, was founded in 1935." -- Selling Cheap 'Generic' Drugs, India's Copycats Irk Industry, Donald G. McNeil, Jr., New York Times, December 1, 2000