A casual chat with a colleague inspired Hira Nayyer to purchase her first Dubai Duty Free ticket. Just days later, the chartered accountant found herself winning the life-changing $1 million prize.
Just days ago, Pakistani national Hira Nayyer never imagined she would purchase a Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire ticket. Today, the Dubai resident is $1 million richer after winning the prize with her very first entry.
The 38-year-old finance professional and chartered accountant said she discovered the promotion after a colleague mentioned it during a workplace conversation, prompting her to try her luck.
Nayyer told “He told me there was this lottery and that the chances of winning were quite good. I had never heard about the Dubai Duty Free promotion before. I checked the website and decided to buy just one ticket.”
The ticket number itself gave Hira Nayyer an unexpected sense of confidence. When the system generated ticket number 1387, the Dubai resident noticed it closely matched her Chartered Accountant membership number, 13837.
“My membership number is 13837, and this was 1387. The moment I saw it, something just clicked. I felt it was perfect,” she said.
After purchasing the ticket, Nayyer put it out of her mind. A few days later, while sitting at her office desk, she watched the live Dubai Duty Free draw on social media. When the winning number was announced, she was stunned.
“They said 1387 and I was frozen in my seat. I couldn’t believe it. I kept thinking, ‘How can this happen?’” she recalled.
The surprise continued when she called her husband, who was unaware that she had even bought a ticket.
“He had no idea I had even bought a ticket. I did not share it with him at all, just because I never thought of winning,” Nayyer said.
When she told him she had won, he initially did not believe her and asked her to send the ticket and the draw video. Only after checking both did he realise the news was genuine.
Despite her sudden windfall, Nayyer has kept the news private, sharing it only with her husband. She said even the colleague who introduced her to the promotion does not yet know.
“Only my husband and I know. I am still sitting quietly in the office as if nothing has happened,” she said.
As the reality of becoming a millionaire begins to sink in, Nayyer has started considering how to use the prize money. One of her biggest dreams is to own a home.
“I never planned what I would do if I won because I never thought it would happen. Now I am thinking about buying property,” she said.
She hopes to purchase a home either in Dubai or Pakistan and is particularly keen to own a property in her own name.
“In my family, women don’t usually own property in their own name. That’s something I would really like to do,” she said.
Nayyer won the $1 million prize in Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire Series 550 with ticket number 1387, purchased online on July 3. She became the 29th Pakistani national to win the top prize since the promotion began in 1999.
In the same draw, Mohammed Ayyubuddin, a 45-year-old Indian businessman based in Sharjah, won $1 million in Millennium Millionaire Series 549 with ticket number 4144. A regular participant for nearly a decade, Ayyubuddin said he had a feeling for the past two days that he would win. He became the 280th Indian national to claim the $1 million prize in the Dubai Duty Free Millennium Millionaire promotion.
