Indian expat who won UAE Dh30m Lottery reveals why he will quit job and return to Kerala

Abu Dhabi: Sunil Kumar Sadasivan, the Indian expat who became the second Dh30 million Grand Prize winner of The UAE Lottery's Lucky Day Draw, has revealed he will be quitting his job and leaving for Kerala for good.

The 52-year-old's win dates back to the Lucky Day Draw held on Wednesday, July 1, when he matched all seven winning numbers to claim the Dh30 million Grand Prize.

A maintenance technician in Abu Dhabi, Sunil Kumar has revealed that he will be handing over half of his winnings to the friend who shared the ticket with him and leaving for home.

He said the win has changed everything he had planned for his future. "I have worked since I was very young, and I feel this is the right time to finally take a step back and rest," he told Gulf News.

"I plan to return home and spend some time with my family, something years of hard work rarely allowed. For now, thanks to the UAE Lottery, I have been given the rare gift of choice, and I intend to use it wisely."

Originally from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Sunil Kumar said he first travelled abroad at 18 and has spent much of his adult life working to support his family.

He married in 2006 and moved to the UAE the same year, later returning home for a brief period before financial circumstances brought him back once again.

The Dh30 million prize will not be his alone. The ticket was bought jointly with a friend who stays in the room next to his, and the two plan to split the winnings between them.

The friend, who wishes to remain anonymous, only recently began playing alongside Sunil Kumar on the Wednesday draw, separate from the regular Saturday group the pair used to play with.

"It was my friends here who had been playing for some time and encouraged me to join them. Some days we'd play together every Saturday, five of us together. It was only recently that a friend and I started playing separately on Wednesdays too, never imagining it would lead to something this significant," Sunil Kumar said.

While he had played for years without giving the process much thought, this time Sunil Kumar chose numbers that carried personal significance to him. "Earlier, I played without giving much thought to the numbers I chose. It was only this time that I decided to pick numbers that were personally meaningful to me, though I can't say for certain that made the difference," he said.

He had picked the numbers to reflect the birthdays of the three people closest to him, starting with his daughter's, followed by his own, and then his wife's.

He also shared how the winning ticket came about. "When we bought that first Wednesday ticket, there was a small Dh100 win on it. The following Wednesday, we put in another Dh50 and bought one more ticket, and that's the one the big win came from."

Sunil Kumar was relaxing with friends after his shift when the winning numbers came through. "I was with friends after our shift, simply relaxing and around 9:45, I checked my mobile and saw that all the numbers I had chosen had matched. I couldn't believe what I was seeing or understand what had happened. I was completely shocked," he recalled.

He turned first to the friend who had bought the ticket with him. "Then I showed it to my friend, since the two of us had bought the ticket together. He stays in the room next to mine. At first, he was only checking to see if we had won the Dh100 prize, since that's what he normally looked out for. But when he saw the actual result, he was just as shocked as I was."

Once the win was confirmed, his wife was the first to know through a call. "That moment is something I will never forget," he said.

Beyond his own family's needs, Sunil Kumar's plans reach further, with houses for people less fortunate than himself high on his list, alongside completing work on his own family home.

 "We've always taken decisions together as a family, whether building a house or helping someone. For something as big as this, I want to sit down with them to decide anything ahead. We have long-standing goals, like completing work on our family home and getting a vehicle," he said.

"Beyond that, I want to take my time and think carefully, because this win through The UAE Lottery isn't just about today; it's about building a stable and secure future for my family."

Amid all the excitement, Sunil Kumar had a simple message for others still waiting for their turn at luck. "What I would tell others is simple: don't lose hope, even if nothing happens for a long time. I played lotteries for years without any major win, and then suddenly, everything changed in a single draw. You never know when your moment will come, so it's always worth giving it a try."