[6] Hamied is best known outside India for defying large Western pharmaceutical companies in order to provide generic AIDS drugs and treatments for other ailments primarily affecting people in poor countries.

[7] Hamied has led efforts to eradicate AIDS in the developing world and to give patients life-saving medicines regardless of their ability to pay,[8] and has been characterized as a modern-day Robin Hood figure[9][10][11][12] as a result.

[13] In September 2011, in a piece about how he was trying to radically lower costs of biotech drugs for cancer, diabetes and other noncommunicable diseases, The New York Times wrote of Hamied: Dr. Yusuf K. Hamied, chairman of the Indian drug giant Cipla Ltd., electrified the global health community a decade ago when he said he could produce cocktails of AIDS medicines for $1 per day — a fraction of the price charged by branded pharmaceutical companies.

[21] Yusuf Hamied and the Cipla Foundation made a Rs 20 crore donation to IISER Pune for a state of the art chemistry facility that would be used in outreach programmes.

[27] Hamied was awarded the 'CNN-IBN Indian of the Year' in the category of business by CNN-IBN in 2012 "for taking on multinational pharma companies and making some of the essential drugs more affordable to the masses in the developing countries."

[28][29] He was also recently interviewed for the Creating Emerging Markets project at the Harvard Business School, discussing at length his strategies to provide AIDS treatments and other drugs to help treat poor people in the developing world.

[32] In its review of the film, India Today noted that "the story of Yusuf Hamied will make every Indian proud as he was the only man who decided to walk against the tide and sell drugs to save lives without focusing on profits.

[26] As per Forbes list of India’s 100 richest tycoons, dated OCTOBER 09, 2024, Yusuf Hamied & family [36] is ranked 53rd with a net worth of $5.7 Billion.