Also known as SD Darmono, he founded Indonesia’s publicly-listed industrial estate developer Jababeka Group in 1989, which obtained two Special Economic Zone designations — namely Tanjung Lesung and Morotai — in the country. Besides being the group’s current chairman, he also developed the 2,200-hectare Kendal Industrial Estate in Indonesia’s Central Java province in 2012, by forming a joint-venture company with Singapore’s state-owned company Sembcorp.
Darmono established President University, an Indonesian private university in the country’s West Java province, in 2004, and currently serves on the chairman board of the trustee of the President University Foundation. He is also the author of several Indonesian-language self-help books, which have been translated into English, Mandarin and Japanese.