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

The stocks he enters or exits are closely watched by fund managers

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