According to the recent findings of Bloomberg, a billionaire investor, and the founder of DMart, Radhakishan Damani, is now among the 100 richest people in the world.

With a net worth of $19.3Billion, which roughly calculates to Rs 14 lakh crores, Damani is now ranked 97 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Damani controls Avenue Supermarts which is a Mumbai-based retailer specializing in low-priced consumer goods. The company sells food, clothing, and other consumer products in more than 200 DMart shops across India which reported revenue of $3.5 billion in the year ended March 31, 2020.

Early Life

Radhakishan Damani was born in Mumbai, in 1956. He grew up in a one-room apartment in a tenement block. He pursued his graduation in commerce, however, he later dropped out and entered the stock market as a broker and trader in the late 1980s.

Damani exited the stock market in 2000 and began building a retail business by buying cheap land in Navi Mumbai. He opened his first D-Mart store in 2002. The business experienced slow growth for almost a decade and opened 25 stores in its first 9 years.

In 2016 alone, 21 stores were opened by Avenue Supermarts. According to the 2017 Bloomberg News report, Damani operates 118 D-Mart-branded stores in 45 Indian cities.

Damani’s Fortune Summary

According to its website, Damani’s fortune is derived from publicly traded Avenue Supermarts, the Indian retailer that operates D-Mart retail stores in more than 200 locations.

The 60% stake attributed to him is held by a promoter group, which includes Mumbai-based Bright Star, which he owns with his wife, and three trusts in the names of his children, according to a filing on the company’s shareholding pattern from March 2021. Only the stakes held by his immediate family are included in the net worth calculation.

According to a Bloomberg Quint report, the billionaire actively invests in publicly traded Indian companies.