Our history

Improving health since 1901

The company known today as Teva started as a small business in Jerusalem in 1901. Teva has since grown significantly worldwide and is now a global leader in generic and specialty medicines.

Since Teva’s establishment in Jerusalem in 1901, our aim has been to help patients live longer, healthier lives. As we work to find solutions to tomorrow’s biggest healthcare challenges, we look back with pride at our humble beginnings and past accomplishments.

When, over a century ago, Chaim Salomon, Moshe Levin, and Yitschak Elstein came together in Jerusalem to form a small pharmaceutical business, they could not have imagined that their company would go on to be a world leader in the industry.

The company known today as Teva started as a small business in Jerusalem in 1901. The young company, named after its pharmacist founders, Salomon, Levin and Elstein Ltd, distributed imported medicines throughout the region using mule trains and camel caravans.

Over the following decades, the company’s growth was spurred as demand for locally produced medicines grew.

In 1976, the company became Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd - Teva is the Hebrew word for “nature”.

Teva grew significantly across the globe through numerous successful acquisitions which integrated and enhanced our expertise in innovative and generic medicines, as well as new therapeutic areas and markets.

These days Teva offers the world's largest medicine cabinet, providing medicines to about 200 million people around the world every day. With one of the most competitive operational networks in the industry, Teva now produces 1,800 unique molecules and a portfolio of 3,500 products, spanning generics, specialty and over the counter medicines.

Our future looks bright

We are a different kind of biopharmaceutical company – one that operates across the full spectrum of innovation to continuously better health worldwide.