He bought 75 raffle rickets this DSF and has no regrets.
Ashfaq Abdul Qader, a sales executive for a mobile phone company in Deira, spent Dh15,000 on Lexus raffle tickets, each costing Dh200, and Dh10,000 for the Nissan Grand Raffle.
And on February 8, the day he bought 10 tickets, the 29-year-old Indian resident received a phone call announcing that he was the lucky winner of the Lexus Mega Raffle – one of the highlights of this year's DSF – valued at Dh303,000.
“Some friends have started to call me more often now,'' said Qader with a smile.
Mumbai boy
He moved from Mumbai to Dubai nine years ago and started buying raffle tickets then. Although he'd been buying a handful of tickets in the early DSF editions, he decided to buy many more this year due to the decrease in the number of people attending DSF partly because of the financial crisis.
“There are usually 5,000 coupons for sale every day. There are fewer people for DSF this year so I knew not all coupons were being sold and I had more chances to win,'' he said.
The Lexus Mega Raffle, organised in cooperation with the Al Futtaim Group, takes place daily during DSF (except Fridays) and consists of two luxury Lexus models: the RX 350 SUV and the ES 350 luxury sedan.
Qader also took home a cash prize of 100,000 in a currency he picked out of many, including the pound sterling, US dollar, euro and the UAE dirham, among others. He got Kenyan shillings, worth about Dh4,700.
Fate had it that among all the places where he bought his raffle tickets, he picked the winning one from the raffle counter next to his office in Deira.
