Radhakishan Shivkishan Damani is an indian investors and businessman. He is famously known as the founder of india’s largest ratail supermarket chain company DMart. According to Forbes Billionaire List 2022, Radhakishan Damani is 81th richest person in the world with the net worth of $27.6B. He is currently stands at the 3th position in the list of india’s richest person.
Now at this time, we have two choices. One, like majority of people, we also can say that oh he is a lucky person. He has this that etc etc. We can make any number of excuses or We have an another option that we can inspired by Mr. Radhakishan Damani sir for the things he had done in his life. And we can also see this as an opportunity to have Radhakishan Damani in our generation. We can learn from him and can grow.
This Article is a brief biography of the eminent personality of india Sir Radhakishan Damani.
Early life of radhakishan damani
Radhakishan Damani was born in 1954 in Bikaner a city of Rajasthan, india. He was raised in a marwari family in Mumbai in a single room apartment. He belongs to kind of lower middle class family. His father Shivkishanji Damani was a stock broker of dalal street. His brother was a stock broker too.
Now because Radhakishan Damani was from a marwari family and their family members were in stock market, so it is natural that Mr. Damani had a business mindset right from his early age.
So, this Article is going to help everyone one of you who want to build a business mindset or want to do something big in life.
| Born | 12 July 1955 (age 67)[1] Bikaner, India |
|---|---|
| Children | 3[2] |
| Residence(s) | Altamount Road, Mumbai[3] |
| Occupation | Businessman, investor[4] |
| Known for | Founder of DMart |
Education of radhakishan damani
Radhakishan Damani did his schooling from a very normal school. Then he went to university of mumbai for pursuing B.Com. After Completing his 1st year in college, he dropped out from college. This is all the education he have.
Wait! But why dropped out? We will see the answer of this question in the “Entry of Radhakishan Damani into stock market” Section. For now, I want to say dropping out college is the biggest turning point of Radhakishan Damani’s life. Or it can be said in other way that the incident that leads Radhakishan Damani to dropped out from his college was the biggest turning point for his career.
Entry of Radhakishan Damani into Stock market
We already know the fact that right from his childhood, Radhakishan Damani had a business mindset. So the answer of the question, why he dropped out of his college? is because he want to start his own business rather than following a traditional path of complete your education and do a decent & secure job. So, he dropped out and started a business of Ball-bearing. He was doing quite well with his business. But it is well spoken
” When you think you have conquered your life… Then life hits you hard “
So, one day life hits Radhakishan Damani very hard. His father passed away.
Now, pause for a second and just think what would be the mental condition of Radhakishan Damani sir at that time being just a college student. Quite horrible! Isn’t? It was the baddest time for him and his family. Because all the financial thing of his family was depend on his father. And in a moment of second, all just broked.
Now, at this situation, there are two types of people, first who broked and another who carry these emotions and build themself to an another level of success. And Mr. Radhakishan Damani was the second person who build himself to a huge success.
He closed his Ball-bearing business. And he joined his brother in Dalal street and started working as a stock broker.
So this is how he entered into stock market.
Radhakishan Damani’s journey of stock market
Radhakishan Damani’s stock market journey is very inspirational. He made his first financial investment at the age of 32. He was a keen observer and in his initial days he was observing the market very carefully just like an eagle.
At that time, when he entered into stock market, the market was ruled by the dreaded bear Manu Manek and the big-bull Harshad Mehta. In stock market Manu Manek was famously known by the nickname Cobra. Radhakishan learned the strategies of shorting the stocks from Manu Manek. He was not just a keen observer, he was also a great applier of things that he learned. So, whatever the strategies he learned from Manu Manek, later, he applied the same strategies to short the the overpriced stocks of the Big Bull Harshad Mehta.
Here we can learn one of the most important rule of success from Mr. Damani that is….
” Whatever you learned atleast once apply it “
Radhakishan Damani was not very famous in 1980s. Stock brokers used to call him ‘GS’ as it was written on his entry badge(used to enter the trading ring). Deena Mehta who is an another famous investor and businesswoman, once in an interview described the early days of Mr. Damani on Dalal street by saying,
“He merely stood there and watched; he rarely called out trades… he would just idle and understand the pulse of the market.”
Radhakishan Damani was a member of a group called ‘triple-R’ in the late ’80s.The group comprised of Radhakishan Damani, the future big bull Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and a chartist Raju. Triple-R was famous for perpetuating the bearish trend in the stock market, rivalling the bullish ideologies of big bull Harshad Mehta.
Reportedly, Triple-R group and Harshad Mehta first competed with each other over the shares of Apollo Tyres. According to Radhakishan Damani, the value of the share was overpriced. So, he began short selling the stock, however, Harshad manipulated the share price with his illegal funding. And as a result, Mr. Damani and his friends faced huge losses at that time.But this loss didn’t affect the mindset of Radhakishan Damani. He just became more aware to the market.
Here is another learning from Mr. Damani’s life is..
” When you start learning from your failures…success starts happening. “
So, he learned from his failure and then he bounced back.
He made profits by short-selling stocks that were inflated by illegal means by Harshad Mehta in the 1990s.
Time passes, we all know the scam 1992. It was one of the biggest scam happened in indian stock market history. It was a disaster for short sellers. After the financial scam 1992 was exposed, a lot of people suffered from huge losses, many lossed their career too. In a interview, post the exposure of the scam, Radhakishan Damani said,
“Agar Harshad saat din aur apni position kar leta, toh mujhe katora leke road pe utarna padta.”
Now, because Harshad Mehta did not hold his position Mr. Damani made a huge profit. Time passes Mr. Damani learned a lot. Damani was reportedly the largest individual shareholder of HDFC Bank after it went public in 1995.
After his successful venture in stock market, he shifted his focus in retail business. We will see this in the next section.
DMart – India’s largest ratail company
In1998, he bought a franchise of Apna Bazar. He worked with the brand for few years but he was totally unsatisfied with the strategies of Apna bazar. So, he decided to start his own retail company. In the year 2002, he founded a retail chain of supermarkets DMart(registered as Avenue Supermarts Ltd). He started with one store in powai. The chain had 25 stores in 2010, post-which the company grew rapidlyandy and went public in 2017.
Today he has 294 DMart stores in different locations in ndia. Because he spent his major portion of his life in stock market, he knew almost everything like what it takes to build a large company. And he applied those learnings into his business. He uses many wonderful strategies to grow DMart. According to forbes, the net worth of DMart was estimated at around 85 billion indian rupees in financial year 2021 across the country. And as a result, today DMart is the largest retail company in India.
Radhakishan Damani’s investment
Mr. Damani manages his portfolio through his investment firm, Bright Star investments limited.
Damani holds stakes in a range of companies, from tobacco firm VST industries to cement producer India Cements. He also picked up a 1% stake in Andhra Paper. He picked up 5% stake in India cements in May 2020 taking his investment in India Cements to 19.89%. Damani publicly holds 6 stocks in his investment portfolio and total value of his stock portfolio is approx Rs 1,02,077cr(Approx US$13 Billion) in 2021.
Inspirations of Mr. Damani – Chandrakant Sampat
Radhakishan Damani is a great personality of india. And it is said that….
“Who inspires you is one of the major factor in your success.”
So, Mr. Damani’s was also inspired by an another great personality of india Chandrakant Sampat.
In an interview, Radhakishan Damani admitted that he was inspired by the veteran investor Chandrakant Sampat, who was known for his value investment in 80’s and 90’s. It is also rumoured that Sampat gave a tip to Mr. Damani about Gillette india.
Radhakishan Damani’s personal life
Radhakishan Damani has a beautiful family. His wife is Shrikantadevi Radhakishan Damani. He has 3 daughters, Manjri Damani Chandak, Jyoti Kabra and Madhu Chandak. Mr. Damani totally believe that he got 3 Laxmi in the form of his daughters.
7 Unknown facts about Radhakishan Damani
1) Mr. Radhakishan Damani is a great observer of market and life as well.
2) Radhakishan Damani was the inspiration and market guru of the big bull of indian stock market Sir Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. In an interview Mr. Jhunjhunwala said,
“I learnt trading from him… He has wisdom, extreme patience and humility… The patience he has to hear the other person’s point of view unbelievable….He taught me life and shaped my nature. If he and my father had not been there to guide me, I would not achieved such success.”
3) Radhakishan Damani is a college drop out.
4) Radhakishan Damani was famous in stock market with the nickname Mr. White and white. Because he always wears white shirt and white pant. He says that it saves a lot time of his morning.
5) He is a shy person. He rarely goes into events. You can rarely find his any public interviews.
6) Radhakishan Damani is known to have helped many small time investors (who owed him money) by buying there undervalued stocks.
7) He owns two very expensive properties.
(i) a 156-room Raddison Blu Resort in Alibag, Maharashtra.
(ii) a beachfront gateway home close to Mumbai.
This is it !! This was the biography of the eminent personality of india Mr. Radhakishan Damani sir.
This Article is written with full heart and it’s always there for the persons who want to do something big in his life.
I will end this blog with a a beautiful quote….
“Change the inspiration… Life will give you a chance to become an inspiration.”
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