D-Mart’s Radhakishan Damani buys Malabar Hill property for Rs 1,001 crore

In the largest ever residential transaction anywhere in the country, Radhakishan Damani, billionaire investor and founder of D-Mart has bought a bungalow in South Mumbai’s plush Malabar Hill locality for Rs 1,001 crore. Damani has bought the property along with his younger brother Gopikishan Damani.

The ground plus two storey-bungalow Madhukunj on leafy Narayan Dabholkar Marg is spread over 1.5-acre land parcel and has total built up area of around 60,000 sq ft. The market price based on the ready reckoner rate is around Rs 724 crore.

The deal was registered earlier this week and Damani’s family office has paid Rs 30 crore as stamp duty for the same, showed the document accessed by ET.

It could not be ascertained if the property will be redeveloped or the existing structure itself will be used by the family as its residence.

ET’s email query to Damani remained unanswered until the time of going to press.

This is the third large property transaction executed by Damani in the last two months. On Thursday, ET broke the story that Damani’s family office has purchased an 8-acre land parcel in Thane from Mondelez India, formerly Cadbury India, for nearly Rs 250 crore.

ET had also reported on March 19 that Damani’s retail chain DMart has bought two floors spread over 39,000 sq ft in realty developer Wadhwa Group’s under-construction project, The Epicenter, in the Chembur suburbs of Mumbai for more than Rs 113 crore.

Over the past few years, several bungalows in south Mumbai’s toniest localities of Carmichael Road, Altamount Road, Nepean Sea Road and Malabar Hill have made way for luxury skyscrapers. Several industrialists and India’s uber rich have also been buying bungalows for their personal use in the billionaires’ district.

In 2015, industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla emerged as the highest bidder for the sea-facing, 30,000-sq-ft Jatia House in Malabar Hill. The Aditya Birla Group chairman paid Rs 425 crore for the property, making it the most expensive bungalow deal ever in India then, surpassing the Rs 400 crore, Maheshwari House transaction of 2012.

Soon after, Cyrus Poonawalla, chairman of the Poonawalla Group, emerged as the highest bidder for the US Consulate’s Lincoln House at Breach Candy for Rs 750 crore, making it the costliest transaction for a house. In 2014, the Godrej family acquired Mehrangir, the Malabar Hill house of Homi Bhabha, father of India’s nuclear programme, for Rs 372 crore.