Mahmud Kamani, the Kenyan-born co-founder of Boohoo.com has sold shares worth more than £80m.

Kamani and his siblings Rabia Kamani and Nurez Kamani sold a total of 36.6m shares. The Manchester-based retailer also raised £50m through the placing of 22.7m new shares priced at 220p.

Boohoo.com, an online clothing store is now valued at a staggering £2.8 billion, four times as much as one of the UK’s largest clothing high street chains Debenham’s.

According to the Kamani the money raised from the sale of new shares would be used for expanding the business, which includes paying for a “supersite” warehouse.

Warehouse expansion plans include an automated distribution centre to provide £2bn in annual sales capacity, on top of the £1bn provided by its extended site in Burnley.

The sale has now left the Kamani family, together with co-founder Carol Kane, with a 39% stake in the business, which also includes the brands Pretty Little Thing and Nasty Gal.

Mahmud Kamani’s father, Abdullah Kamani, moved his wife and four children from Kenya to Manchester in 1968, where he set up a clothes shop. By the early 2000s, the firm was selling nearly £50 million of clothing a year to shops all over Europe including Select, Pilot, Mark One and Bay Trading.