Ddamulira still reeling from hitting Shs206m jackpot

Lawrence Ddamulira won Shs206m from playing Lotto

June 26 will forever be etched in Lawrence Ddamulira’s memory. On that day, at 3pm, he received a phone call informing him he had won a whooping Shs206m, which is going to change his and the family’s life. He went wild with excitement, and immediately called his fiancé to break the news to her. She was hesitant though.
His fiancée Joelia Kalono, told him not to be so happy as it could turn out that whoever had called him was a fraud.
“I told her that I had never told anyone that I was playing Lotto and I had recognised Isaac’s (Rucci) voice from the game’s promotion shows on television,” Ddamulira recounts.
Still unconvinced, Kalono called Rucci, Lotto’s publicist, asking him if he is also an emcee, to prove if it was a really genuine call. He answered in the affirmative and invited her to meet him at the Lotto offices on Kampala Road.
When the couple got there, she became more excited than her husband, about reaching the venue where the televised show was shot. She apologised to Rucci for doubting him. He took the couple through how the game is played and the winners chosen.
Two days later, they were invited again and hosted on the show where the TV audience got to witness, that Ddamulira had won the cash, as he displayed it.

What it took to win
His efforts had paid off because every other day, he would take time and resources off to play Go Lotto. It took him several attempts and belief to keep going. The several attempts cost him Shs450,000.
“At some point, my wife told me to stop wasting money on Lotto. She asked me to at least give it to her to plait her hair. She is the one who taught me how to play but she did not win at all. When I started playing, I was persistent,” Ddamulira recalls.
He would use mobile money to play. Many times he says he would not win or he would get frustrated by poor network.
He would return home at about 10pm, so he asked his fiancee to watch the segment when winners would be announced on TV. Ddamulira’s first win was Shs7,000, which was encouraging enough for him to keep playing. He knows well that business has returns and losses so he treated the game like business.
Part of his motivation to play Lotto was when his fiancée started registering losses in her retail shop. Her profits had significantly dropped. At one point she would make as much as Shs200,000 but her returns had dropped to Shs10,000 on some days. Recently, Ddamulira had asked her to close shop and assist him in his business as a supervisor.
With the cash he has won, Ddamulira’s aspiration is to start a small factory under which he can manufacture snacks and cut out the process of having to buy from suppliers. At the moment, he employs 10 people. He projects his work force will grow four-fold.
“We have begun recruiting people. I would like to employ people I have been dealing with in the chain process,” he says, adding that he is also considering helping his wife live her dream of constructing rentals.
He narrates that people around the neighbourhood of Kasubi have started feeding his fiancee with all sorts of stories, that, for instance, he might find another wife now that he has got more money.
“I assured her that in case we ever get irreconcilable differences then I will leave her and get another woman but not have two at once, because I cannot handle two women at a go,” the 42-year-old says. He is a family man, and a father of two girls and three boys.

The businessman
Ddamulira runs Happy Snacks, which vends a range of snacks, including crisps, bagia, hard corn and soya.
He buys in bulk and supplies to both small and large players in the market such as Capital Shoppers, in and out of town.
Ddamulira says Happy Snacks has supported his family for 10 years. He started the company as a vendor. He had done some business as a coffee agent in Fiba, a company owned by the late Suleiman Kiggundu, who owned Greenland Bank.
“We would buy coffee in the villages and transport it to the head office on Sixth Street, Industrial Area, in Kampala, for sorting and cleaning before it was exported. When Fiba fell short of funds, we were laid off,” he recalls.
When he was laid off, he started the snacks company, with Shs50,000 as capital. He bought snacks in bulk and asked his fiancee to sell some at Aga Khan Primary School where she made Shs105,000 as profit. It was an unexpected profit and the couple celebrated.
The story was not complete. His wife told him about a boda boda rider who had wanted to snatch the money. While sorting out the money to pay the boda fellow, he had tried to grab it from her. He had started the boda boda so he could grab and ride off with the money. He failed to steal it and even left without the fare he was owed. The next day, she went out and bought a pair of shorts for her husband and as luck would have it, there was a $100 note in the shorts’ pockets.
When she changed the money, she bought a sideboard for their humble sitting room. In 2007, the couple bought a plot of land in Kasubi, at Shs2.5m. Ddamulira inquired about construction charges, and the builders he asked said they would charge him Shs1m to construct a three-bedroom house. He spent Shs3m to complete it.
Already, friends have been pushing him to have a wedding but he says he is taking his time. His plan is to start a factory and from the profits of the produce it makes, they will have a wedding.
As a businessman, he says it is important to offer good customer care to business associates when he supplies snacks. He is a graduate of business studies from Nakawa Business School (now known as Makerere University Business School – Mubs).
He is looking at improving his packaging and renting a shop in Kikuubo, a trade hub in downtown Kampala. His advice to fellow young people is to be careful about the kind of groups they affiliate with, and also stay away from drug abuse. He also assures anyone who takes part in Play Lotto that it is a genuine game.
Ddamulira comes from a staunch Catholic family. His father is a farmer, while his mother is a retired school matron. Her last station was at Mt St Mary's College Namagunga. He is the first born of three.