Radhakishan Damani; also know as Mr. White (founder of D-Mart)

These days people are looking for offers and discount on grocery and buy now use for long term. D-Mart is the hypermarket and supermarkets in India where people is buying grocery in there range price and using for longer time. Earlier D-Mart started in 2000 in Mumbai. Later it expend in different cities.

Radhakishan Damani  is the founder and promoter of D-Mart. Radhakishan Damani is also known for Mr. White. He was born to Shivkishanji Damani in a Marwari family in Bikaner, Rajasthan.

His Early Life At The Stock Market

Radhakrishnan’s father was already a stock market sub broker,who with his elder son used to be operating it. At the age of 32,his father unexpectedly passed away & thus even though RD wasn't interested in joining this stock market business,he had to since someone needed to lend a support to his brother.

While working as a sub broker,he would mainly trade the markets by speculation,you could say similar to a lottery,that someday you would win something huge.

As happens with most speculators,even he suffered some losses,thus he stopped trading & started concentrating on the fundamentals of a stock. 

One fine example of successful value investing he did was ‘Gilette Inc’,which had interests into men's grooming.The funda was quite simple, “People will shave,no matter what comes” .
 

Thus with the above strategy he made quite stellar returns in few companies,which made him one of the most valued investors at those times,until 1992.

The early 90’s,were the day's of Harshad Mehta,who was the bull maker.
Radhakrishnan,with the earnings he had got in the stocks from 80’s,started to take on the bullmaker,MR Mehta.

RD would speculate & heavily short sell the stocks ,even as pumping would be done by Harshad. The reasoning he did was again simple,the stocks had moved up very substantially without the corresponding change in the valuations of the stock. The short selling continued,even when the share prices were rallying,since he had firm belief & conviction about the Fundamentals.

In mid 1992,the scam of Harshad Mehta was exposed & there was panic selling in the stocks,thus due to this,RD earned dramatic & his Networth increased unprecedentedly.ACC was one company which he had invested heavily.

In 1998,once again the battle continued between him & MR Mehta,same speculation,but on three stocks namely Videocon,BPL & Sterlite.Again the prices fell by more than 50% within few day's & he made a killing profits.

When he founded D-Mart

In 2000, when he founded D-Mart, the supermarket retail chain which is now valued at above $6 billion (approximately Rs 40,000 crore), making him richer than Anil Ambani and Rahul Bajaj.

 Damani had no intentions whatsoever to enter the stock market. Having started off as a simple trader in small ball bearings, he was forced to shut down his business and join his brother’s stockbroking firm after the demise of his father. He was 32 by then and had no idea of how the field worked. He really started taking it seriously after he gathered inspiration from Chandrakant Sampat, the ace investor in the business.
Despite his share of initial struggles, Damani refused to give up and went on to formulate a strategy of his own. He always believed in long-term results. That worked well for him and within a few years, he went on to the big league of Dalal Street in Mumbai. He was always keen on not letting any egos come in the middle and meddle with his business. Gradually, he scaled up and created a massive fortune in the early ’90s.

To begin with – D-Mart wants to create an image amongst the masses of a discount store that offers most of the products from across all major brands. Basically, a store that offers value for money!

Now, since people mostly come to Dmart because they all what they need under one roof; hence, Dmart stores are operational in high traffic areas and across three formats including Hypermarkets, that are spread across 30,000-35,000 sqft, Express format, that is spread over 7,000-10,000 sqft and lastly, the Super Centers, that are set up at over 1 lakh sqft.

And Dmart’s target audience being the middle income group, it uses Discount offers as a promotional tool for luring the customers and increasing sales as well.

  61-year-old Radhakishan Damani’s long-term investment philosophy. As market folklore goes, when HDFC Bank was listed in 1995, Damani was the biggest individual shareholder in the bank.

For 61-year-old Damani, a former stockbroker who was raised in a one-room apartment in a Mumbai tenement block, the listing catapulted Damani’s wealth beyond that of Ajay Piramal, Anil Ambani and Kapil Bhatia, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Damani and his direct family have financial interests in Avenue Supermarts amounting to about 60% of the company.

Soft-spoken with a preference for white clothing, Damani eschews media attention. He earned hundreds of millions of dollars from successful stock market investments that he used to kick-start a bricks-and-mortar retailing business just when many merchandisers were focusing on e-commerce.

 

The 61-year old now owns 82.36 percent of the parent company Avenue Supermarts because of which his wealth is now Rs 32,934 crore. Apart from that, he has stakes in VST Industries, TV18, Somany Ceramics, Jay Shree Tea, Samtel Ltd., Sundaram Fasteners, GE Capital Transportation Industries, and 3M India.
The D-Mart supermarket chain is completely owned and operated by Avenue Supermarts Limited (ASL), and has a presence in 117 locations across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Chhattisgarh, and NCR.
 

Damani is now worth $5.4 billion (Rs 35,775 crore) which, going by the latest Forbes list, puts him among the top 15 Indian billionaires globally. An investment banker talks about how only a few stockbrokers are also distinguished entrepreneurs and Damani is one of them. Speaking with business today he said, “Damani is a good example of aping the western private-equity players, who are also good at turning out businesses.”

Now hailed as the ‘Indian Warren Buffet’, Damani’s properties include the 156-room Radisson Blu Resort in Alibag, a popular beach-front getaway near Mumbai, according to Forbes.
Being a humble human being who doesn’t like to be in the spotlight for his success, Damani always steers clear of the media which is why he is a source of inspiration for many in the country.