How disaster inspired a multi-billion dollar business

Serge Godin recollects the occasion that gave him the drive and assurance to prevail in life - watching his dad's sawmill burn to the ground.

He was 17 in Canada at the time, it was 1966, and as his father's business was uninsured, the family lost everything.

One of nine kids raised in country Quebec, Mr Godin, alongside his kin, all of a sudden needed to gain cash to help his folks pay the bills and keep a rooftop over the family's heads.

So Mr Godin worked at a market in the nights after school, and afterward at a laundry's on Saturdays.

Goal-oriented to run his own particular organization, in his 20s he utilized reserve funds of C$5,000 ($3,800; £3,100) to begin a PC business that he called Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique (CGI). In English, this interprets as Information Systems and Management Consultants.

Today CGI Group is a worldwide IT frameworks monster that appreciates yearly incomes of C$10bn, while Mr Godin's own fortune is assessed at $1.5bn.

Presently 67 years of age and the company's administrator, he says: "I would not like to do a reversal to the circumstance when we lost everything. That is likely what incited me to manufacture CGI."

Multiplied in size

In the wake of picking up a software engineering degree from Laval University in Quebec City, and a couple of years working for two organizations, Mr Godin propelled CGI in 1976, when he was 26.

In run of the mill PC industry start-up form, he started the business from his carport. Following a couple of months all alone, a companion joined the business, and in its first year, CGI produced incomes of C$138,000.

Serge GodinImage copyrightSERGE GODIN

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Mr Godin is minimal known outside of Canada, however regularly highlights in Canadian papers

From that humble begin, CGI has developed consistently from that point forward, fuelled by no less than 81 acquisitions, as Mr Godin has kept on taking after an arrangement of eager development.

In the organization's latest substantial takeover, it purchased its European adversary Logica for C$2.7bn in 2012. This dramatically increased CGI's workforce, which climbed overnight from 31,000 to 68,000.

Today its business customers incorporate organizations, for example, digger Rio Tinto, tire-producer Michelin, aircraft gather Air France-KLM and London's Heathrow Airport. CGI additionally works for 22 of the world's biggest banks, and has no less than 2,000 government contracts the world over.

Mr Godin, who decreased his day by day workload in 2006 when he changed from CEO to director, says the business has not abandoned quick development.

"We want to twofold the extent of the organization [again] inside five to 10 years," he says.

It hasn't all been plain cruising for Montreal-based CGI as of late, notwithstanding.

In 2013, it stood out as truly newsworthy for all the wrong reasons, when it was reprimanded for specialized issues that tormented the dispatch of the US government site where individuals on low or no salary could apply for the new "Obamacare" medical coverage.

CGI's central command in MontrealImage copyrightCGI

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CGI has a marvelous central command in Montreal

CGI had a focal part in building the site, however Mr Godin said at the time that the organization "wound up in the eye of a tempest" between the two principle US political gatherings.

Thinking back, he says: "We stayed and completed the work.

"We were depicted by the press similar to the framework integrator, yet we were definitely not. We were one of 52 organizations required in the venture.

"We didn't battle this in the press, since we have a code of morals and we never condemn our customers."

While the issue couldn't have been charming at the time, Mr Godin and CGI have dependably demanded that there was no long haul reputational harm.

Individuals focused dream

As far as how CGI is keep running on an everyday premise, Mr Godin says he sees it as a major family and that he needs to keep everybody upbeat.

"At CGI we have a fantasy, and this fantasy is focused on the center of our business - our kin," he says.

Serge GodinImage copyrightSERGE GODIN

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The organization coasted on the Montreal Stock Exchange in 1986

"They are the ones who take the lift to come to work each day, and we need to ensure they will return and will like working here.

"As managers, we have rights, yet we additionally have obligations towards our representatives."

One path in which CGI tries to care for its staff is urging them to end up shareholders. What's more, for each share that a worker purchases, the organization will get him or her a similar sum.

Mr Godin says: "This thought of sharing is essential to me, since I originate from a major family."

Robert Young, innovation expert at research gather Canaccord Genuity, says: "Serge Godin is very much viewed as the developer of an organization with a solid culture and client connections.

"There is a teach he has heated into the business that is obvious in the solid budgetary controls, and thorough way to deal with [what is known as] the 'CGI administration establishment' - an arrangement of demonstrated procedures and techniques that characterize CGI engagements."

'Obligation to give back'

At the point when not keeping on driving CGI, Mr Godin concentrates on his philanthropy work.

In 2000, he set up a magnanimous establishment called Jeunesse-Vie or Youth Life, which intends to help burdened youngsters crosswise over Canada through mitigating neediness and enhancing their training and wellbeing. As such, he has given it more than C$60m.

Having as of now been accepted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame, a year ago he was likewise perceived for his business and philanthropy work when he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, one of the nation's most elevated regular citizen respects.

Mr Godin says: "When you have the opportunity to have an effective business, it is your obligation to give back."

He includes: "My beginnings advise me that it is essential to offer assistance."