Producer
Cipla
Indian generic pharmaceutical company and the world's largest generic inhaler manufacturer by volume. Pioneer of generic salbutamol inhalers in India (1978). Manufactures generic pMDIs at scale. Received FDA final approval for generic Proventil HFA. Critical supplier during COVID-19 when global inhaler demand surged.
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2
Goods downstream
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Facilities
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2 inputs Cipla supplies
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Generic Respiratory Inhalers (pMDI + DPI)
35%HIV/ARV and Infectious Disease Generics
25%Branded Generics (India) + Oncology
40%
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Did you know2023
Cipla (Mumbai) was founded in 1935 by Khwaja Abdul Hamied, a chemist and Indian nationalist who was a personal friend of Mahatma Gandhi. In 2001, Cipla Chairman Yusuf Hamied (Khwaja's son, Cambridge-educated chemist) shocked the global pharmaceutical industry by offering to sell a triple-combination HIV antiretroviral drug to Médecins Sans Frontières and African governments at $1 per day per patient — when the same branded drugs from Western pharmaceutical companies (GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb) cost $10,000-15,000 per year per patient. Cipla's offer catalyzed the global access to medicines movement, compelled US PEPFAR funding for African HIV treatment, and contributed to an estimated 12+ million lives saved through antiretroviral treatment in Sub-Saharan Africa. The same Cipla that provides generic albuterol inhalers at low cost to US asthma patients — making it one of the most important generic competitors in the US asthma market — was also the company that broke the HIV drug pricing model that was condemning millions of Africans to death. Cipla's founder's friendship with Gandhi and his son's pricing decision are among the most consequential supply chain interventions in pharmaceutical history.
Cipla Limited ↗Origin2023
Cipla was founded in 1935 in Bombay by Khwaja Abdul Hamied — a chemist who had studied chemistry in Germany and met Mahatma Gandhi before independence. Gandhi reportedly asked Hamied what he intended to do for India; Hamied's answer was to provide affordable medicines. Cipla's founding philosophy was explicitly nationalist and social: make essential medicines available to Indians who could not afford imported European and American pharmaceuticals. The company resisted patent medicine pricing throughout the colonial era. In 2001, Hamied's son Yusuf K. Hamied — then chairman — made international history by announcing at the European Union conference on AIDS in Brussels (and later confirmed at Barcelona) that Cipla would provide a three-drug antiretroviral combination (nevirapine + lamivudine + stavudine) to African AIDS programs for USD 1 per day — compared to the USD 10,000-15,000/year (USD 27-41/day) charged by US and European pharmaceutical companies. The offer was a direct application of the TRIPS flexibilities in the Doha Declaration and forced a restructuring of global pharmaceutical access debates, eventually leading to significant price reductions by all major ARV manufacturers and creation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Cipla Limited ↗