Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani was raised in a
Maheshwari Marwari Hindu family in a single room apartment in
Mumbai. He studied commerce at the
University of Mumbai but dropped out after one year. After the death of his father who worked on
Dalal Street, Damani left his ball bearing business and became a stock market broker and investor. In the early 1990s, he made big profits by
short-selling stocks that had been
artificially inflated by
Harshad Mehta. Damani was reportedly the largest individual shareholder of
HDFC Bank after it went public in 1995. He quit stock market in 2000 to start his own
hypermarket chain,
DMart, setting up the first store in
Powai in 2002. The chain had 25 stores in 2010, after which the company grew rapidly and
went public in 2017. In 2020, he became the fourth-richest Indian with a net worth of $16.5 billion. He was ranked #117 on the global list of billionaires. He was ranked #87 on the global list (
Forbes) of billionaires 2022 with a net worth of $18.9 billion. In October 2024, Damani and his family were ranked sixth on the Forbes list of India’s 100 richest tycoons, with a net worth of $31.5 billion. == Investments ==