Padam Bahadur, a 41-year-old Nepali driver with a food trading company in Dubai, has gone from earning a monthly salary of Dh5,700 to being an overnight millionaire after scooping the Dh20 million ($5.4 million) jackpot with Mahzooz at the weekend.
He plans to use the windfall to pay for his 12-year-old daughter’s education, build a house and invest in a business in his home country, and reduce credit card debt in the UAE worth Dh40,000.
Mr Bahadur will also donate to charity and said that he has been helping the elderly and the blind in Nepal for the past seven years.
However, he does not plan to quit his job and will bring his family to the UAE in a few years.
Mr Bahadur's life-changing winning numbers for the April 15 Mahzooz draw were chosen randomly. The numbers were 5, 10, 41, 46 and 49.
“I didn’t check the Mahzooz results on Saturday night as I was tired after work,” said Mr Bahadur, who has been in the UAE and working for the same employer for 23 years.
“I slept in late on Sunday and got a call from the organisers, but initially mistook the call for a joke. Even my family was in disbelief until I sent them proof of my win.”
Over the past two years, Mahzooz, which means lucky or fortunate in Arabic, has created 39 millionaires and given away more than Dh407 million in prize money to about 236,000 winners, Farid Samji, chief executive of Ewings, the operator of Mahzooz, said.
In December, Dubai resident Inger became Mahzooz’s first female multimillionaire after winning the Dh10 million jackpot.
Junaid Rana, a Dubai-based company driver, remains the UAE's biggest prize draw winner after winning the Dh50 million Mahzooz jackpot in October 2021.
Mr Rana, originally from Pakistan, went from earning Dh6,000 a month to having the financial freedom that millions of people around the world spend years seeking.
“I couldn’t believe it at the time; it’s like dreams come true,” Mr Rana said during an interview at the time for The National's Pocketful of Dirhams podcast.
Sherlon, a 35-year-old Filipino in Dubai, also won Dh1 million in a raffle draw conducted by Mahzooz on Saturday.
The radiographer with a private hospital in Dubai, who earns a monthly salary of Dh11,000, will use the windfall to secure his four-month-old son’s future, build a dream house for his wife in the Philippines, and also share it with his family.
Aboobacker, a 48-year-old Indian businessman who runs a chocolate shop in Kuwait, also won 400 grams of gold in a Mahzooz raffle draw on Saturday. He has been in Kuwait for 28 years and plans to reinvest the money in his business.
There are other draws in the UAE that offer large prizes, including Emirates Draw, which was launched in September 2021. Participants have to match seven numbers to win the mega prize of Dh100 million, the largest on offer in the UAE.
However, nobody has yet claimed the top prize.
10 ways to win cash prizes in the UAE
- Mahzooz draw — Dh20 million
- Emirates Draw — Dh100 million
- Big Ticket Abu Dhabi Duty Free draw — Dh15 million
- Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire draw — $1 million (Dh3.67 million)
- ADIB Ghina Savings draw — Dh3 million grand prize plus monthly prizes
- ADCB Millionaire Savings accounts — Dh1 million grand prize plus monthly prizes
- Kunooz Savings Account — grand prizes of Dh1 million and a Tesla
- FAB Al Awwal Savings Certificate — Dh1 million yearly grand prize and Dh200,000 every quarter, plus monthly prizes
- Mashreq Millionaire — Dh1 million grand prize plus monthly prizes
- National Bonds Reward Programme — two Dh1 million grand prizes every quarter plus monthly prizes
