Radhakishan Damani, the founder of the driving retail chain D-Mart, has risen to become the world’s 98th wealthiest person.
By Yashika Goel/The Newster
Radhakishan Damani, the founder of the driving retail chain D-Mart, has risen to become the world’s 98th wealthiest person.
He has a net worth of Rs 1.42 lakh crore now, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This is the story of a ‘retail king’ who began investing with just Rs 5000.
Radhakishan Damani was born in a Marwari family in Bikaner, Rajasthan, in the year 1954. His family once lived in a one-room flat.
He began his studies in commerce at Mumbai University, but dropped out after the first year. He built the first D-Mart store in 2002, and D-parent Mart’s business Avenue Sipermart went public in 2017, after which the company was listed on the stock exchange.
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Radhakishan Damani was born into a family of stockbrokers. Damani halted the loss-making company when his father Shivkishan Damani died in 1985-86. Following that, he and his brother, Gopikishan Damani, concentrated their efforts on the stock market and began investing with Rs 5000. Damani gained significant earnings in the 1990s, when Harshad Mehta rattled the country’s financial markets adversely. Harshad Mehta had gambled on rising stock market at the moment, whereas Damani had bet on the falling stock market.
Damani put money into HDFC Bank’s initial public offering (IPO) in 1995, following the strategy of remaining in a firm for a long time at a low valuation.
He made a lot of money in the beginning by investing in the stock market. After that, he left the stock market in the year 2000 to start his own company.
Damani then opened the first D-Mart store in Powai, Navi Mumbai, in 2002 after purchasing a vast stretch of land at a low cost, and he hasn’t looked back since.
D-Mart currently operates on 238 retail stores across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, NCR, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Rajasthan.
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