Colin Thornton

Profile 

“I can prove them wrong.”

Colin Thornton is the man behind Dial-A-Nerd, the well-known South African IT company that is many people’s service provider of choice when they need a bit of high-tech help.

What was originally just an idea in the minds of two university friends with a knack for fixing computers has grown into a national business, and the company now has branches in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Thornton never thought that the brand would become a household name. It all began in 1998 when Thornton and his friend, Stuart Cullender, set up a small computer repair business in a garage. At first it was an informal arrangement, and the guys only did computer repairs every now and then.

But in time, demand for their services grew and the business filled an important niche in the market – they became the stereotypical to-go-to nerds that could fix faulty computers. The computer boffins were no longer just tinkering away at broken PCs in a dusty garage; they were providing advice to new customers who wanted to buy computers and they upgraded components, too.

Today, in addition to repairing computers, the company offers plenty of other IT services, such as network maintenance, server design and maintenance, network consultancy, design and implementation, and cloud solutions.

Dial-A-Nerd got first prize in the IT and telecommunications category of the 2011 South African Service Awards, and in the same year, it was featured on CNN Africa.