Meet D-Mart's Radhakishan Damani, the silent giant of stock markets

Peddar Road versus Dharavi. This, in short, describes 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. And he kept accumulating more. When a prominent player in the market asked him why he was buying HDFC Bank stock when there were so many other options available at cheaper valuations, his reply was: you can’t stay on Peddar Road (one of Mumbai’s most expensive areas) at Dharavi’s (Mumbai’s biggest slum) rates. HDFC Bank, which trades today at over Rs 1,400, went on to become one of the many multi-baggers in Damani’s portfolio from the adjusted Initial Public Offering price of Rs 8 per share in 1995. No wonder, then, fund managers or investors have closely followed his investment philosophy by keeping an eye on the stocks he enters or exits. The IPO of Damani’s company Avenue Supermarts, the operator of D-Mart stores, the affordable one-stop shop, was therefore lapped up by investors. The issue was subscribed 145 times. As a trader, he has been more popular as a bear and locked horns with the original Big Bull, Harshad Mehta, twice. Both times, Damani came out on top. Nifty Trading Tips

In the early 1990s, when Mehta took the stock market to dizzying heights, Damani was on the short side of the market. Both of them kept on betting in opposite directions till it was revealed that Mehta was siphoning money from the banks, and the markets crashed. A few years later, Mehta, in his new avatar as an advisor, helped push shares of select companies like BPL, Videocon and Sterlite. Damani was again in the way. He shorted these stocks till the prices came crashing down. While he was in this bear avatar, he made long-term value investment calls in HDFC Bank, Gillette India (then Indian Shaving Products), VST Industries, Crisil and many others. “It is impossible to follow Damani as one does not know if he is a long-term investor or a trader in the scrip,” says a fund manager. 

While building D-Mart, Damani, who is skilled at both bull and bear plays, has used his bull avatar and his philosophy of long-term investing. According to reports, he exited the stock market in 2000 and worked on setting up this business by buying cheap land in Navi Mumbai. He tested the ground with his first store in the then upcoming suburb of Powai in 2003. The growth wasn’t 

exponential for almost a decade. In the first nine years, till 2010, the chain had only 25 stores. Then, Damani pushed the growth button. In 2016, the company opened 21 stores — the highest ever. At present, it has 110 stores. His target: the cost-conscious households in India.  Future & Option Trading Tips