Mahmud Abdullah Kamani (born August 1964) is a British

billionaire A billionaire is a person with a net worth of at least one billion (1,000,000,000, i.e., a thousand million) units of a given currency, usually of a major currency such as the United States dollar, euro, or pound sterling. The American busin ...

businessman. He is co-founder and executive chairman of

Boohoo Group Boohoo Group plc is a British online fashion retailer, aimed at 16–30 year olds. The business was founded in 2006, and had sales in 2019 of £856.9 million. It specialises in own brand fashion clothing, with over 36,000 products. Growing rapid ...

Early life

His father Abdullah Kamani is from

Gujarat Gujarat (, ) is a state along the western coast of India. Its coastline of about is the longest in the country, most of which lies on the Kathiawar peninsula. Gujarat is the fifth-largest Indian state by area, covering some ; and the ninth ...

, India; settled in Kenya, but left in the 1960s due to unrest with his wife and four children. Abdullah started by selling handbags at a market stall, before starting a family textile business, supplying New Look and

Primark Primark Stores Limited (; trading as Penneys in the Republic of Ireland) is an Irish multinational fast fashion retailer with headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It has stores across Europe and in the United States. The Penneys brand is not u ...

Career

In 2013, Kamani was awarded ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the English Asian Business Awards. In 2015 he was honoured at the Legends of Industry Awards. In April 2017, Boohoo announced that its profits had almost doubled to £31 million on sales up by 51% to almost £300 million. When the company was floated on the stock market in 2014, it was valued at £560 million, and is worth about £3.54 billion as of July 2021. In June 2017, Kamani sold a total of 36.6 million shares together with his siblings, Nurez and Rabia. He sold over £80 million worth of Boohoo shares and raised an additional £50 million by placing 22.7 million new shares. The funds raised are earmarked for the development of a “supersite” warehouse. In April 2018, Boohoo shares recovered after brand PrettyLittleThing doubled sales. Boohoo owns 66% of the brand. In February 2021, Boohoo has bought Arcadia brands Dorothy Perkins, Wallis and Burton out of administration for £25.2 million. Boohoo has bought the brands' e-commerce and digital assets and associated intellectual property rights.

Personal life

Mahmud Kamani and his wife Aisha have three sons. Two of them,

Umar Kamani Umar Kamani (born 21 March 1988) is an English fashion retailer and businessman. At 24, Kamani and his brother Adam co-founded a fashion firm and online retail company selling clothing, accessories and other items to women mainly aged between 12 ...

and

Adam Kamani Adam Kamani (born June 1989) is a British businessman. He is chief executive of the Kamani Property Group and KM Capital, and co-founder of PrettyLittleThing. Kamani grew up in Chorlton. Kamani's grandfather, Abdullah Kamani, left Kenya in the ...

, who co-founded

PrettyLittleThing PrettyLittleThing is a UK-based Fast fashion, fast-fashion retailer, aimed at 16-24-year-old women. The company is owned by Boohoo.com, Boohoo Group and operates in the UK, Ireland, Australia, US, France, Middle East and North Africa. The brand ...

, are active in the family business. His brother Jalal Kamani is the former trading director of Boohoo. Mahmud Kamani retains his connection to Kenya by supporting Kibera Kids, a Nairobi based non-profit organization. In July 2020, allegations were made about the I Saw It First fashion brand and Morefray Ltd, a supply company to Boohoo, of paying less than the minimum wage and failing to protect staff from

coronavirus Coronaviruses are a group of related RNA viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans and birds, they cause respiratory tract infections that can range from mild to lethal. Mild illnesses in humans include some cases of the com ...

during the

pandemic A pandemic () is an epidemic of an infectious disease that has spread across a large region, for instance multiple continents or worldwide, affecting a substantial number of individuals. A widespread endemic (epidemiology), endemic disease wi ...

. The company is owned by Jalal Kamani, who jointly founded Boohoo with his brother Mahmud.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kamani, Mahmud 1964 births Living people British billionaires British businesspeople of Indian descent British people of Indian descent British people of Gujarati descent British Muslims British retail company founders

Mahmud Mahmud is a transliteration of the male Arabic given name (), common in most parts of the Islamic world. It comes from the Arabic triconsonantal root Ḥ-M-D, meaning ''praise'', along with ''Muhammad''. Siam Mahmud *Mahmood (singer) (born 199 ...