Prominent Indian investor Radhakishan Damani has entered the elite list of top 100 billionaires of the world as per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Damani's net worth has surged almost 30% this year led by gains in his retail business D-mart which has over 200 stores in India.
Shares of Avenue Supermarts, the Indian retailer that operates D-Mart retail stores, have gained over 30% this year. Avenue Supermarts scrips are up 85% from the lows it touched in 2020.
Damani stands at 97th position on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index with a net worth of $19.3 billion.
RK Damani joins the Indian billionaire club headed by Mukesh Ambani with $82.7 billion net worth, Gautam Adani with $55.8 billion, Azim Premji with $36.9 billion, Shiv Nadar, and Lakshmi Mittal. RK Damani is now richer than billionaire banker Uday Kotak.
The market capitalisation of Avenue Supermarts has gone up six times since listing in March 2017, from Rs 39,813 crore to Rs 2.36 lakh crore. The publicly traded business sells food, clothing and other consumer products.
Radhakishan Damani was born in Mumbai, in 1956, where he was raised in a one-room apartment in a tenement block. He dropped out of commerce college after his first year 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 with his first D-Mart store in 2002.