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In his time Dr Yusuf Hamied — the long time head of Indian pharmaceuticals company Cipla is 'Yuku' to friends — has had quite a few honours. There was the Padma Bhushan in 2005 and being elected an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2012.

But this Wednesday is the icing on the cake when Cambridge University awards him an honorary doctorate of science.

Hamied means it when he says: 'This is very, very special, I am very humbled and really honoured.'

Hamied is an ideal candidate. As head of Cipla, he fought to ensure that the suffering millions in Africa got anti-AIDS drugs at an affordable price. 'I have always said this, that if you are in healthcare you are not only in business. Because you are saving lives you have to have a humanitarian approach — it goes hand in hand with business,' he says. 'You can't be mercenary. Multinationals in pharmaceuticals, particularly the overseas ones, are very, very mercenary.'

But this attitude provoked Sir Richard Sykes, the former CEO of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), the British multinational, to call him a 'pirate' in 2000.

Hamied was hurt: 'I don't think pirate is a nice word to use for anybody. Robin Hood, yes. I don't break laws.'

In Africa, Western companies, whose drugs for HIV/AIDS treatment cost $12,000 a year, were confronted by an Indian upstart. 'Humbly, what Cipla did in the year 2000 was offer medication below a dollar a day when at that time only 2,000 to 4,000 people could afford treatment — and today by the grace of God nine million are being treated for HIV,' he points out. 'That initiative that was started has helped save at least 10 million lives.'

The pirate jibe came up some years ago in a conversation Hamied had with a member of the Nobel Prize committee. 'He told me, 'Your name is not being considered — presumably for the Peace Prize — because the word pirate has appeared in the press.' '

All this is serious stuff. Over lunch at Fortnum & Mason, an elegant department store in Piccadilly, Hamied reveals how his eventful life has been shaped by a succession of 'accidental happenings'.

He remembers his very first day in Cambridge. 'It was early October 1954.'

Sixty years ago, accompanied by his father, he took the train from Liverpool Street in London to Cambridge. Father and son then walked a longish distance to Christ's. 'I was very nervous. I didn't know what I was in for. I never thought I was bright. And the first person we met was Lucan Pratt, senior tutor.'

Pratt would be a big influence on his life, as would Professor Alexander Todd, a chemistry don. It was on Todd's recommendation that the young Yusuf was admitted to Christ's in the first place.

Another 'happening' was that his father, Khwaja Abdul Hamied, who founded Cipla (Chemical, Industrial & Pharmaceutical Laboratories) in 1935, was sheriff of Bombay when Todd was visiting the city in 1953.

'My dad asked him, 'What are the minimum qualifications for anyone to enter Cambridge?' And he replied, 'If we like the boy, we take him.''

The education officer at the Indian High Commission in London, a Mr Kidwai, was 'horrified' to learn that Yusuf had gained admission directly without going through the diplomatic mission, as was customary in those days.

But Todd's instincts were correct. For although Hamied was admitted with only levels, he graduated with a First in chemistry in the natural sciences tripos and stayed on to gain a PhD, all by the age of 24.

As for Todd, he got a knighthood in 1954, a Nobel Prize in 1957, a peerage in 1962 and was Master of Christ's from 1963 to 1978. He died in 1997.

A month before term began, Yusuf, along with his parents and his younger brother, 'Muku', boarded the British P& ocean liner, the SS Chusan, from Bombay, got off at Marseilles and then took the train from Paris to London.

The 18-year-old undergraduate was allocated a first floor room, C3 in Second Court. The lavatory was in a narrow passage outside. He bought a bicycle ('Todd, even when he was Lord Todd, would also cycle') and attended lectures in the chemistry department (which now has a Todd-Hamied wing) — 'I had to work very, very, very, very hard'.

His India contemporaries at Cambridge included Nehru's nephew Ajit Hutheesing; and Jehangir and Iqbal Chagla, sons of the jurist M.C. Chagla.

A close friend at Christ's was Swaranjit Singh, a Sikh, who was 'useless' at studies but a cricketing Blue. At the International Club, Hamied persuaded a German girl, Irmegard, to dance with the painfully shy Swaranjit. 'To cut a long story short, a few months later they decided to have a Cambridge civil marriage on September 23, 1956. I, being a very close friend, was one of the witnesses. And the second witness was Manmohan Singh (the future Prime Minister was reading economics at St John's). Even today Manmohan Singh is friendly with Swaranjit — as I am.'

In the six years between 1954 and 1960, Hamied, though very lonely at first, could never phone home. 'We used to communicate in the blue aerogramme.'

His first time in the air was when he flew home for a holiday in 1955 in an Air India Super Constellation — the journey took 24 hours. During Christmas 1959, after he had submitted his PhD thesis on the 'high colouring matter to body weight in aphids', he met Farida. They were married in 1963, three years after he returned home for good.

Another 'accidental happening' was how his parents met. Having followed Gandhi's call to leave British educational institutions, Khwaja Hamied and his best friend Zakir Hussain (later to be President of India), followed the Mahatma first to Santiniketan and then to Delhi. Eventually, the two young men ended up in Berlin, which then had a small Indian colony.

One morning, Khwaja was meant to meet friends for a sail around one of Berlin's lakes but got the time wrong and ended up on another vessel. He amused passengers by showing them cards tricks. Suddenly, one girl cut in: 'I know how you do it!'

'And that,' smiles Hamied, 'was my mother.'

Luba Derczanski, who came from a Jewish family in Lithuania, had been allowed to visit Berlin by her mother only because her sister, Luba's 'Aunt Bertha', was married to Arthur Tanzler, a German Luftwaffe fighter pilot who had somehow survived World War I.

'If he hadn't, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you.'

The first born to his parents in Bombay was his sister, Sophie, two years Yusuf's senior. So it was decided the second would be in his mother's home. Hamied's parents left Bombay and went by boat and train to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where he was born on July 25, 1936.

His father passed away in 1972, aged 74, his mother in 1991, aged 88. His boyhood friend, Zubin Mehta, is planning to conduct a concert in her honour in Vilnius.

Hamied quips: 'My mother was Jewish, my father Muslim, nearly all my friends are Hindus — what does that make me? International. I believe in all religions.'

Now that he has stepped down as Cipla's chairman and become more of a mentor as non-executive chairman — 'it means I don't get a salary' — he can follow the sun, keep up with 200-300 technical journals and divide his time among London, Marbella in Spain and Mumbai.

'I don't like the cold. Give me 40�C to 4�C. I like the heat.'

It's certainly been hot at the top of Cipla, especially now that India produces a big proportion of the world's generic drugs. Hamied also worries that 'the overuse of antibiotics has caused a lot of problems in India'.

Hamied may have won the battle over AIDs in Africa but not the war. He cannot manufacture the new drugs made in the West which he argues should also be available in India for a standard royalty of 4 per cent.

'There is big obsolescence in drugs,' explains Hamied. 'Today there are new drugs for HIV, there are new drugs for Hepatitis C, there are new drugs now for TB, and we are standing there impotent — the Indians. We can't market them and manufacture them because they are all covered by patent. That is something which is very, very sad. Don't deprive millions of drugs.'

Healthcare in India, he says, is in 'permanent crisis' — with 110 million mentally ill patients; 80m cardiac cases; 60m asthmatics; 50m hepatitis B cases; 60m diabetes cases. One in three Indians suffers from latent TB.

'We Indians have to decide for ourselves in healthcare and in food — these are the two critical areas for India.'

The honorary degree from Cambridge will strengthen his position.