In 1996, Tadeu Avellar founded CH with a mission that the market didn't yet know it needed. Discover the story of persistence, purpose, and innovation behind CH Master Data Astrein's 30 years.

The book that changed everything.

Tadeu Avellar should be a civil engineer.

It was what fate seemed to have decided. His father, Josino, built roads all over Brazil. Tadeu grew up watching that man closely, admiring the lined-up tractors, the smell of earth, the feeling that something bigger than anyone could do alone was being built.

But during one summer vacation in Belo Horizonte, while visiting his grandmother, his father placed a book in his son's hands. The subject: computers. Tadeu remembers the cover to this day. And he remembers, with absolute precision, the exact moment he turned the first page and felt he had found something.

The conversation with his father came soon after. That conversation every son dreads: the one about going against what his father has always dreamed of. Tadeu arrived terrified. And he left with the greatest support he could have received.

When the course you wanted to take didn't exist.

In the late 1970s, when Tadeu took the university entrance exam, there simply wasn't a computer science degree in Brazil. The closest path was to study Economics, in order to be able to take the Computer Science extension course at PUC-RJ, recognized as one of the best in the country, with professors from IBM.

Tadeu went in there. And left with his first internship.

He briefly worked for an air taxi company, but it lasted a week because the French boss was too rude, and he ended up at Conpart Consultoria, a consulting and software development company for the financial market. He started as a programmer and progressed to systems analyst.

Conpart Consultoria also had an industrial division: Conpart Indústria Eletrônica, which manufactured magnetic tape units during a time of market reserve, when importing was prohibited. One day, the manager called Tadeu and a friend and said that one of them would need to go to the industrial area. Both wanted to stay in finance. The manager let them choose.

Tadeu accepted the challenge.

The mentor and the MRP that ran in 2 hours.

At Conpart Indústria Eletrônica, Tadeu met Pegado, the company's director and former director of COBRA, a brilliant man who, in Tadeu's own words, would be responsible for teaching him the basics that he still carries with him today.

The problem on the table was serious: the factory's MRP system, the one that calculated what to produce, what to buy, and in what quantities, took two full days to run. After running, it needed to be readjusted. In total, the company lost ten working days per month just on this process.

Tadeu, still young, overheard the conversation and said it could be resolved. The manager thought it impossible. Pegado placed his bet on Tadeu.

The two spent months working together. Pegado set up an office next to his, showed up whenever he could, drew on the board, and taught. Tadeu did the coding. The result was a system that ran in two hours and generated complete reports by buyer, by supplier, and by price. It was so well received that Tadeu was promoted to IT manager.

The education he received during that period shaped everything that would come after.

Collor arrived and the world changed.

In 1991, President Fernando Collor ended the market reserve. Importing became permitted and cheaper than manufacturing in Brazil. The industry began to collapse.

Tadeu saw what was coming. And he made a decision that few would have the courage to make: not to look for a job.

He went home, looked at his wife, and said he was going to start a consulting firm. She supported him.

With friends who also lost their jobs when Digiponto, a keyboard manufacturer at the time, went out of business, Tadeu founded Octopus in 1991. In six months, the initial eight partners became three. Then two. Then one.

One of the partners left because of the music. The other disappeared for more than two weeks without a word, at a time when cell phones were still a rarity. When he returned, Tadeu ended the partnership. He left penniless, handed over his personal computer to pay off a small company debt, and was literally left without his main work tool.

He borrowed his father's computer. And he continued.

The problem that didn't exist anywhere else in the world, and the solution that was born in Brazil.

During that same period, Tadeu was introduced to consultant César Sucupira, a former director at Gillette who had brought the MRD concept to Brazil and had a solid portfolio of major clients.

César was working at Brahma, which had just been acquired by the Garantia Group. The situation was chaotic: more than 120,000 items in stock, 43 factories, more than 100 buyers, and a registration problem with no solution in sight. Brahma had searched the entire world for a system to manage materials data. César had even personally gone to the Hanover trade fair in Germany. Nothing.

That's when he looked at Tadeu and suggested: what if we built it?

Brahma agreed. In 1992, the Octopus team, the César Sucupira team, and Brahma's own professionals spent months sitting at the same table, designing from scratch what would become a groundbreaking master data management system. The PDMs, the flows, the criteria to avoid duplication and similarity.

In 1993, Brahma had completely re-registered its inventory. From 120,000 items, it went down to 43,000. A reduction of more than 60%. The project was such a success that Brahma remains a CH client to this day.

There, at that table, was born what would become the backbone of CH.

The most difficult and most important period

Selling the software was another story.

Tadeu offered the solution for US$14,500. Companies listened, found it interesting, but lacked the personnel to implement it, create the PDMs, and operate the system. Without clients, partners, or a formally established company, Tadeu worked from his bedside in an apartment with three children, his mother-in-law living with him, and his wife running a clothing manufacturing business in the kitchen.

The smell of screen printing ink filled the house. He would arrive late and still help with silk-screening t-shirts until the early hours of the morning.

When the money wasn't enough to pay for his daughters' school, he sought a dignified way out: he became a substitute teacher. He worked two mornings a week, received R$ 350 a month, and his daughters studied on full scholarships. He suffered every Monday. But he didn't give up.

The name that became a company.

The turning point came with Zé Guilherme Lima, director of Alcoa, who had been following Tadeu's work for months with growing enthusiasm.

As the negotiation neared completion, there was a catch: Tadeu no longer had a company. To issue an invoice to a multinational corporation, he asked his friend Luiz Alberto to use his company, Carvalho Horta Sistemas e Consultoria. In the proposals, Tadeu abbreviated it as CH Consultoria.

And that's how he became known in the market. Tadeu from CH.

When the contract was approved, he rushed to open a company that started with the letters CH. He chose the name Consultores Habilis and CH was founded. It was 1996.

The first project was implemented with the help of Miriam, who came from the original Octopus team. Accenture, which also worked at Alcoa, saw the quality of the work and began recommending CH. First to Multibrás, now Whirlpool. Then to Sadia, now BRF.

From that point on, everything evolved.

Building the community

With the arrival of the internet and the first consolidated contracts, Tadeu invested four years developing Webformat, the platform that allowed different clients to consult the same catalog and share the same PDMs (Product Data Management). The logic was simple and revolutionary: if two clients had the same item, why would each need to build that information from scratch?

In 2001, Webformat was completed. And TBG became the first client of the collaborative community, a model that remains CH's biggest differentiator in the market to this day.

30 years later

When Tadeu tells this story, he makes a point of emphasizing one thing: he didn't do it alone. The persistence was his, the purpose was his, but the path was built with people. With his father who lent him the computer. With his wife who worked as hard as he did, or even harder. With Pegado, who taught on the blackboard. With the clients who trusted him before any guarantee.

And with a principle he never abandoned: doing the right thing. Even when the wrong path seemed easier.

Thirty years later, CH Master Data Astrein is the largest Master Data Management company in Latin America. With over 250 active clients, a 98% historical retention rate, and more than R$10 billion in savings generated for its clients over the decades.