Personal life
The founder of Avenue Supermarts Limited and a multibillionaire investor from India is Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani. Through his investment company, Bright Star Investments Limited, he also oversees his portfolio. He is listed by Forbes as the 98th richest person in the world as of October 2023 and the 8th richest person in India. He is married and has three children.
Early life and career
In a Maheshwari Marwari Hindu household in a small Mumbai flat, Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani was nurtured. He attended the University of Mumbai to study commerce but left after a year. After the passing of his father, a Dalal Street employee, Damani ceased operations of his ball bearing company and started working as a stock trader and investor. In the 1990s, he sold short stocks and made money. After HDFC Bank went public in 1995, Damani was reputedly the company's largest individual shareholder. He experienced a significant increase in his income in 1992 as a result of the short-selling gains at the time, which occurred after the Harshad Mehta Scam gained widespread attention.
He ran a branch of the cooperative department store Apna Bazaar in Nerul in 1999, but he was "unconvinced" by its economic strategy. In order to launch his own chain of hypermarkets, DMart, he left the stock market in 2000 and opened the first location in Powai in 2002. In 2010, the chain had 25 locations. Since then, the business has swiftly expanded and gone public in 2017.
With a net worth of $16.5 billion, he rose to the fourth-richest Indian position in 2020. On the list of billionaires throughout the world, he came in at number 117. He had a net worth of $18.9 billion and was rated as the 87th richest person in the world by Forbes in 2022.
Investments
Damani also owns shares in a variety of businesses, including the cement manufacturer India Cements and the tobacco company VST Industries. Damani purchased 1% of Andhra Paper. In May 2020, Damani acquired a 15% share in India Cements, increasing his ownership of the company to 19.89%. Damani has 14 publicly traded stocks in his investment portfolio, which will be worth around 178,572.4 crore (US$22 billion) in 2023.