COURTING Cipla

PHARMA MAJOR CIPLA HAS GENERATED CONSIDERABLE INTEREST FROM PRIVATE EQUITY PLAYERS. WHAT MAKES IT SUCH AN ALLURING PROSPECT, AND WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR THIS STORIED COMPANY?

- NEETU CHANDRA SHARMA

CIPLA LTD, BEST known as an innovator that broke the monopolies of multinational pharmaceutical giants to sell affordable drugs for AIDS and the flu, has suddenly become the pill that big investors and rivals want to pop.

Set up in 1935 by Khwaja Abdul Hamied, a chemist and disciple of M.K. Gandhi, Cipla is also a star of India’s freedom movement with a storied history.

Today, Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity group, is looking for the entire promoters’ stake of 33.47 per cent owned by the Hamied family. So are Indian rivals Torrent Pharmaceuticals and Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories.

Yusuf Khwaja Hamied, 87, the founder’s son and current Chairman, is non-committal. Hamied, a doctorate in chemistry from Cambridge University who took over in 1972, has had a long innings, steering Cipla from the days when pharmaceuticals meant chemistry to today’s world of biologics and gene and stem cell therapies.

On August 10, at Cipla’s 87th annual general meeting, Hamied spoke of the Covid-19 pandemic’s challenges, the transition of pharmaceuticals, Cipla’s history of innovation, its purpose of caring, and even climate change issues. Everything apart from whether the Hamieds would sell their stake in Cipla or to whom. The company is mum on the subject, but people close to the family have said the generation after Samina Hamied, Yusuf Hamied’s niece, is not interested in running it. Samina, a postgraduate in international accounting and finance from the London School of Economics & Political Science, has driven Cipla’s growth after joining as Executive Vice Chairperson in 2016.