The brothers behind a South African PC hardware success story

A defining moment in the business journey of brothers Asgar Mahomed and Mahomed Cassim was the day their mother, Kulsum, tried to help them buy a car.

In their biographical book, From Dining Table to Corporate Boardroom: The Esquire Success Story, the brothers told veteran journalist Fakir Hassen that they had launched a PC assembly business in their late teens — and it was taking off.

Besides wanting their independence as young men, they needed a vehicle to start making their own deliveries.

“They were very enterprising and we encouraged them. I would drive them to the address they provided and then later go and pick them up. I also taught both Mahomed and Asgar to drive,” their mother said with pride.

Their father, Joosub, was stricter as a result of his own experience and refused to let them have the family car on their own.

“I knew how I was when I was their age and I didn’t want them to get up to the same mischief,” he said.

When the brothers eventually saved enough money for a deposit for their own car, Kulsum approached a well-known motor dealer in Pretoria, only for her boys to find her coming out of the dealership in tears.

The dealer, who was also a member of the extended family, had been insulting and dismissive regarding how they would pay the balance.

“That incident strengthened our resolve even further to become leaders in the field of business so that our mother would never have to go through an ordeal like that again,” Mahomed says.

“It was a major turning point in our lives as we appreciated even more the sacrifices that our mother made to get us started up in our business, and the patience with which she did that.”

Asgar said that while they had long since forgiven the family member, the memory remains.

The brothers have been building computers since they were teenagers. However, their passion for business and drive for success all comes back to family.

Their father had his own shop, which Mahomed, as the eldest, was expected to take over when he finished school. As a result, they were entrepreneurs from a young age.

“As schoolboys, we sold items as diverse as bracelets and toys to our classmates and others in the school,” Mahomed remembered.

“We also found odd jobs to earn pocket money, such as working in the video shop owned by the Chhayya family in Laudium. While at college, we sold audio cassettes and floppy disks to fellow students.”

“We also loved tinkering with electrical and electronics items, repairing irons, toasters and radios on the dining room table,” Asgar added.

“With our sales and part-time work, we managed to save R4,000, which became our starting capital as we began assembling computers on the same table,” Asgar adds.

Mahomed said that same dining room table still has a place of honour in his home.

“I will never part with it. It serves as a reminder to always remain as humble as our beginnings.”

With the advent of IBM PC compatible computers for affordable home use, the brothers realised that the market would grow exponentially as prices decreased with mass production.

Their first customer was Ashref Ismail, then a teacher at Fordsburg Primary School and later a senior official at the Road Traffic Management Corporation before his retirement.

Ismail was so thrilled to get his first PC delivered and installed personally that he remained a customer ever since, supporting the brothers throughout the years.

When the brothers started out as self-taught technicians, they had no formal IT training. However, as the industry was rapidly developing, they felt a need to acquire some qualifications.

Mahomed, then eighteen years old, had started a course at the Computer Academy of South Africa in Johannesburg.

“A year later, in 1987, Asgar joined me as well,” he said.

“We became familiar figures as we hitchhiked daily between home in Laudium and the college, even picking up some customers from among those who gave us lifts,” said Asgar, who is a year Mahomed’s junior.

While their business had attracted customers through word-of-mouth referrals, the brothers decided to take out advertising in the classified columns of a few newspapers to grow their then-unofficial business.

They were surprised at the immediate reaction from across the country.

“Suddenly, we were spending all night assembling computers, catching just a few hours’ sleep before heading out for deliveries. People were driving up from Durban to fetch their PCs,” recalled Mahomed.

Mahomed soon told his father that he didn’t want to take over the shop and instead wanted to start his own IT business.

“I was happy for him and advised Mahomed to formalise his business,” Joosub said, prompting the elder brother to put down his screwdrivers for a moment and look at business models.

In 1989, the brothers opened their first IT shop just a few blocks from their father’s shop in Pretoria North. They called it Micro Matrix.

Thanks to the advertising they were doing, Micro Matrix was pulling in orders for more than 50 PCs per day.

Within a few months, they had outgrown their first little shop. In the days before GPS and Google Maps, ease of navigation by paper map and telephoned directions was also an issue.

“It was time to move to centrally-located premises which were more easily accessible, especially for the many clients from other towns and cities,” said Asgar.

They found an existing PC outlet for sale after the owner had passed away in Sunnyside, at the edge of the Pretoria CBD.

They employed more staff, some of whom remained with the business for many years, and continued growing rapidly.

Within three years, they had ten branches in Pretoria North, Sunnyside, Groenkloof, Rustenburg, Randburg, Cape Town, Durban, Middelburg, Ellisras (Lephalale) and Witbank (eMalahleni).

“It was also during this time that we decided that we needed to brand our computers, and Casey was born, soon becoming a respected PC brand,” says Mahomed.

The name was taken from their family surname. “We were all known as the ‘KC’ family,” explained Asgar.

“To distinguish between the retail outlets and its IT support services, we established Casey Electronics in 1994,” Asgar said.

In 1998 the Casey Group, as well as the retail stores, Micro Matrix Computers, was listed on the JSE under the name Casey Investment Holdings Limited.

Mahomed, then 31, and Asgar, 30, were the youngest participants on the stock exchange at the time.

The Black Information Technology Empowerment Company made an offer to acquire Casey in 1999, and the R1-million deal closed in August 2000.

After a few months of leisure travel, the brothers were already itching to return to the fast-paced industry.

Retail was out of the question, not only because of a five-year restraint of trade agreement but also because of their own values.

Thus, the idea of Esquire Technologies was born — a wholesaler that would source a diverse range of products to be supplied to retailers only, not directly to consumers.

“When we were very young, there was a very big company called Esquire that made films,” Asgar said.

He recalled how when they helped at a video shop in Laudium on weekends, almost every Indian film on VHS had an Esquire label on it.

“That became our password on our computers, but when we started the company, we needed a name that was different from our Casey brand,” he explained.

“So, we went around searching for a name, and found that the domain esquire.co.za was available, and we took it.”