Yusuf Hamied turned Cipla into a generics giant and cheap-AIDS-drug pioneer.

Yusuf Hamied, son of Cipla founder Khwaja Abdul Hamied, studied chemistry at Cambridge and returned to India in 1960, where British-era patent laws blocked local firms from making many existing drugs.

He helped form the Indian Drug Manufacturers Association and lobbied to change the law. India's 1970/1972 patent act, letting firms reverse-engineer drugs via a different process, opened what he called a 'golden' era for Indian generics.

In 2000 he told the European Commission Cipla could offer a generic triple-drug HIV treatment at $800 per person per year, versus around $12,000 from multinationals, and later supplied an antiretroviral cocktail to Médecins Sans Frontières at under $1 per patient per day.

Cipla became one of the world's leading generics makers and put an AIDS treble combination within reach of millions at under $1 a day.

The 1972 patent change removed the legal barrier Hamied needed to enter.

He bet on volume and affordability rather than on innovative research margins.

Producing cheap HIV drugs put Cipla's name and purpose ahead of its rivals.

He kept the family firm's identity while building a professionally managed generics business.

A family pharma firm handed to the next generation can win by changing the rules of its market and then pricing for the customer, not the incumbent — a regulatory bet plus a pricing bet.

Hamied stepped down as managing director in 2013 after four decades, handing the business to a professional management team while staying on as non-executive chairman. Cipla remained one of India's largest pharmaceutical groups and a symbol of affordable generics.