Building. It's a process of creating something new. Something lasting. Something that will serve a purpose.

Charles, the founder of Sabotec, understands this process very well. He spent years building technology solutions for the corporate world. But he desired to build something more. Something that had eternal significance.

My greatest success is how many lives are being transformed with the help of technology which we provide to our Adventist ministries. And how many people get the opportunity to know about Jesus and give their life to Jesus my greatest success. In this episode, we'll explore Charles' journey of faith and entrepreneurship discovering how he uses technology to build not only software, but a brighter future for the Adventist church and the people that it serves. I'm Luke for Ruger and you're listening to the Blue Vineyard podcast.

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Blue Vineyard podcast. My name is Luke and the guest that we have today is Charles. Charles, I'd like to welcome you to the show. Hi Luke.

Hi, thank you for being on with us today. Charles, just so people can get a feel for who you are, we'll get into the history of how you got to where you are. But can you tell us a little bit about what you do right now? Sure.

I finished my master's in business administration in finance sometime in 2007 and I joined the corporate world in 2007 in software industry. I spent close to 16 years in the IT industry, primarily working on software development end to end from analysis, business analysis all the way to development and post-protection support. That's what I've been doing and during this course of time, I had a vision to do something in God's work. So therefore, we'll talk more in detail about cyber tech but that's where we launch cyber tech to help Adventist ministries on the technology space.

Yeah, it's such an interesting space that you're in and there are very few people that are tackling it in the same way that you are. So as you said, we'll go into a bit more detail there but maybe if we rewind and just talk a little bit about your path to where you are, perhaps tell us where do you live right now by the way. Sure. I was born and brought up in India and then work took me to United Kingdom.

I lived there for about six years and then in 2018, I had an opportunity to move to North America, especially in United States and currently, I live and deliver in United States and I've been working in the corporate world in United States for the last five, six years. How do you think the, because obviously you've experienced multiple cultures right, from India to the UK to the US, how do you think that prepared you for the business world and entrepreneurship? Do you think that gave you a competitive advantage or changed the way that you view things compared to the people around you? It definitely gave competition and a competitive advantage for me because it is a huge experience, right?

The way British things and the way American things and not only I spent a little time in Germany as well and the way Germans think is completely different experience and when I was working in UK and in US, I still have exposure working with people in Australia. I have exposure working with people in France and Germany. So I had an amazing experience working with multicultural people and each of us has some positives and some negatives and it gives immense knowledge of how different cultural people think and how they react. And for example, Indians use a lot of body language, right?

So definitely it gives a great advantage when you talk to customer and when you understand where the customer is coming from and what kind of a cultural background they have, that gives you a different perspective of how to approach them and how to strategize your communication and working. It is a great advantage, I would say because this is where a lot of people struggle with different culture. Yeah, I love that insight. That is your professional development.

Have you always been an Adventist or is that something that you came to later in life? Yeah, sorry Luke, I didn't mention that. I would call myself a Bon Adventist. My dad and my mom became Adventists when I was very young, maybe two years old or I don't know, but because they were searching for Adventist schools, a Christian school for my elder brother and eventually one of his friends said, you know, there's an Adventist school.

So they became an Adventist and right from my childhood I only remember going to Adventist churches and I studied in Adventist school for 14 years and then eventually moved into college. So we didn't have much Adventist colleges back home in India on the computer side. So therefore I ended up going to, I would say, public universities, but I was born and raised in Adventist family and in Adventist community. And so when did you make the decision that you were going to open a software company that is specifically to serve the Adventist world?

I had an entrepreneurial mindset for a very long time. I can trace back when I finished my master's in administration and finance. One of the interviewer asked me, what is your passion? And I told, at that point in time, I didn't know, but I told I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

So therefore it has been ringing my mind for quite a long time, but got very busy into the corporate world. And at some point I was thinking, you know, what am I doing in God's work? Can I leave the corporate world and get into full time ministry? And all I knew was computers and doing gospel work is completely different.

You know, to my knowledge, pre-COVID, no technology played a vital role in gospel work. So I was thinking, oh, maybe I should re-skill myself in different areas. Like, you know, in fact, you would be surprised. I tried to enroll myself in pastoral studies in Andhra's University.

And so that is my journey. And I was praying to God, God, I really wanted to do something in your vignette. And all I knew was computers. How do I, you know, and all of a sudden a thought came into my mind in my morning prayer is, why don't you help Adventist ministries on technology?

Right? And I think this is the start of COVID, right? And that's when, you know, a lot of ministries were moving towards, you know, online churches and so on and so forth. So I was traveling to a camp meeting in down south in America.

The entire road was, you know, it's the start of COVID and peak of COVID, complete lockdown everywhere. And I was traveling all the way. And I asked this question, my wife was asking, do we really need to travel such for it? So it's a, it's 10 hours drive for us.

And then, and then I said, you know, maybe God is impressing my heart to, you know, go. So we went to that camp meeting. And behind me, there was one gentleman sitting and he was a musician. And he had an aspiration to build a mobile app for music.

And I was telling him, hey, I had an intention to do apply my technology in God's work. Maybe it's a good, good marriage. So then we eventually talk and then eventually, you know, that is how Sabbath Tech came into existence. Wow, that's incredible.

So what have you always offered the same services or what services are you offering now? Like what's the, what does the offering? Our services is building software, which includes web applications, mobile applications. That's our primary services.

And apart from this, which also includes from an application services perspective, we also focus on gaming apps. We are in discussion with a couple of ministries to help build them gaming apps. We're primarily primarily looking at from an application standpoint, web applications, mobile applications, which includes your TV apps as well, and then gaming apps. And then apart from this, we also have the capability to, to help migrate.

For example, let's say you have an application, which is built on an age old technology, can we move to a better technology, you know, can we migrate to a better technology, can we migrate from on prem applications to a cloud applications. So those are the, you know, services we provide at this point in time. Okay. So I feel like we're getting a good picture here of your experience and what offers, but I think an interesting question to ask, I love, I love asking entrepreneurs this question, because typically anybody who has been successful in business usually has something, some individual thing that they really excel at that has enabled them to do that.

So what would you consider your superpower is as, as an entrepreneur, as a leader? What most of the software development projects fail, you know, in the industries, you know, there's a, there's a 70% of the projects really fail. And close to 30 to 40% of the projects struggle. The primary reason is the scope of the project.

So my strength, I've spent enormous amount of time and I started my career as a business analyst. So I spent enormous amount of time in understanding client requirements and ensuring that requirements meet your final end product. Right. So therefore, therefore I say the scope is king.

So therefore, as long as you are ensuring that the expected outcome of the software and the requirements is captured well, and you have on top of this, you put a strong governance project management, most of the projects will succeed. I think that's where I spend enormous amount of time and I think that's, that's my strength, which I bring. The second skill set I would say is more of sales. How you pitch your story to your client, I have spent close to 16 years spending my time with client, not only understanding the requirement, but also understanding their expectation where the market is heading.

What's the body language of the client and, you know, so all of these. So client management is something I've, I've, you know, God has given the exposure to strengthen that skill set. So that is what I bring to the table, which is a very important ingredient for success. And as you do have that exposure, you will obviously get to see, see further into the into the future, right?

You're seeing the things that are coming and responding to them before they, before they arrive. What are the things that you think are ahead of us that you're most excited about? Like, what are the technologies that are coming that you think are going to be the most transformative? I think, I think mobile technology has already taken the world by strong, right?

Because, you know, if you really look at, you know, 90% of the world's population has some kind of smart devices on their hand, right? Very less people are using computers, very less people. So therefore, any, any ministry which needs greater exposure need to put their information on the smart devices on the hand. So therefore, mobile technology is moving towards that, we call the digital front door.

And a lot of hospitals are moving towards that, that access to information for customers at their fingers is very important. So that's where the technology is going. And the second way why, you know, everybody talks about this is now kind of a cliche is the AI, you know, a lot of people are a little worried and scared about it, but I'm a little optimistic about it because it gives an immense opportunity to use technology to do things much faster. For example, right?

I'm just giving an example. 160 years of Advent is we have translated only point, we have translated only 4% of Ellen white books in top 10 languages. So if you're going to apply the same methodology, you're going to take another 600 and 800 years or even much more. So this is where technology can play a better role. So if, if we Adventist think we have a short time to finish God's work, so we got to do something different and much faster.

So AI can be built to use a faster and automated way of translating our Adventist content in a much faster and quicker way. Right? That's one area you could see technology playing a vital role. And there are many other spaces as well.

But this is one, because I always feel what is the important need of Adventist, right? Taking the gospel to the world. Now, how do you take the gospel to the world? It's either the audio content or the video content or the text content, right?

Now, what is our challenge? We are, we have taken it to only top 10 languages. There are 250 languages in India. So how are we going to reach them?

There's Mandarin in China. China and India put together is more than 50% of world's population. So therefore, we have to do something different and technology can and AI can be leveraged much more in Adventist ministries to use your textual content, your video content and your audio content. And if it can smartly translate them with 99% accuracy, great success.

That's where I see technology can play a great role. And apart from this now digital marketing is also picking up. And because, you know, because, you know, thanks to COVID blessing in disguise, Adventists who were little conservative in terms of exposing themselves to technology is now thinking technology. So therefore, there's a great opportunity not only use AI for software solutions, but also use AI for your marketing solutions as well.

How do you reach larger audience? How do you understand their demographics better? How do you understand their cultural? Now, all these can be better utilized using the new age technologies.

So I share your optimism for AI and what it can be used for. I'm curious, do you see, do you think the risks are completely blown out of proportion or do you think there are risks? It is, it's just we, we need to mitigate them as we go. There are definite risk look, you know, there's no doubt about it.

There's immense risk and a lot of technical, you know, the smartest of the smartest of the tech giants are seeing some serious issues. I'll give you a simple example, right? Facial recognition. I know it's very, very simple, right?

Because a lot of iPhone carries facial recognition. But it is, it is little risky as well. For example, right? What if if I can identify a community and use facial recognition to borrow them from mingling with community?

That is the smallest risk I can see. And, and there are a lot of other risks. I don't want to scare people, but definitely there are legitimate risk. Because if you really look at any, anything, right, any technology, right, be it gun, right, if there are bad actors in this community, and if the tool or the technology goes into the bad actor, definitely they can misuse it.

So in the world, there are bad actors by this whole therefore therefore there's so much of focus on cyber security in the banking world and so on and so forth. So definitely there are bad actors. And definitely there are huge risk if the technology is misused because there's no governing body, right? That's what Elon Musk is trying to say.

There's no governing body to control what is ethical and what is unethical, right? So therefore there are there are legitimate risk. But I see there are a lot of positives which can be leveraged as well. But we got to be careful about, you know, how we are using it.

Agreed. And I just think that when, when we are in a situation like this where AI is being created, whether we engage with it or not, it's being created. And if we are not familiar with the technology, if we're not leveraging the technology, then it puts us at the disadvantage. If even if it does go wrong, we would be far better served by understanding it better than anybody else.

So it makes sense for us to be as engaged as we can to understand what technology is available, what it's capable of, how we can leverage it for the gospel. But also that will give us the ability to understand what's happening and the risks involved and mitigate them more effectively as well. Absolutely, Luke. Absolutely.

So just thinking about about cyber tech and where you're going and what you're doing. How do you think about success? What are the what are the metrics of success for cyber tech or for you as a leader and entrepreneur? The way I look at is, you know, how we are helping Adventist ministries to reach more people is my success.

It's not about the financial, the bank balance and the profit and loss statement. And is it it's not primarily, you know, how much we make or lose the way I see it, how many lives we can transform. I'll give you a classic example. There was a there was a famous scientist.

He was part of Indian satellite research organization and eventually became the president of India. And they asked him he was able to successfully launch many satellites into the into the orbit. And they asked him, you know, what's the greatest invention you have ever made? And he made this remarkable mention.

He invented a metal, kind of a metal, which was used by medical group. When when somebody, you know, has leg fracture or hand fracture, this metal should be light, but strong. So he and his team put together some research and study, and then he invented that metal, which is lightweight, but also strong, but can also be used by the the medical community. He said, that's the greatest invention because I'm able to change the life of people.

So so coming back to that analogy, my greatest success is how many lives are being transformed with the help of technology, which we provide to our Adventist ministries, and how many people get the opportunity to know about Jesus and give their life to Jesus is my greatest success. That's a that's a great success to aim for. So looking back at all of your experience, if you could return to, let's say, 20 year old Charles, what advice would you give him? Very, very good question.

I always a lot of time I contemplate this. I had a great passion to be a doctor, to get into medicine. I was little playful when I was my in my 17s. And therefore I I am I was little studious, but I did not, you know, spend much time in studies.

So always think that I could have spent more time in studies. And the same person in the previous analogy I gave, he says knowledge is power. So that is the timeframe where you have to equip yourself with a lot of knowledge. You know, studying, spending more time in studies, spending more time in building your career.

There are three factors to be a successful person, right? One, how well you know to write and communicate, right? And how well you know to speak in a more articulate way. And how sharp you can think and be smart.

So speaking skills, very optimal speaking skills, and optimal writing skills, and a sharp thinker. And this can be done only when you spend your early part of your life on foundational education, very strong foundational education. So if if I have to give myself, I would say go pick your books and focus on that. And what happens after that is you get little busy with your life, you get into family life, you get, you know, you get married and you have children and you need to entertain your children, you go to you have church activities.

So you get less time to actually study. For example, when you're in college, you get you get 10 hours to study. Can you imagine? But when you get married, oh, what?

Amazing. But when you get married, or when you have children, you don't get 10 hours to study, maybe you can squeeze in a couple of hours, right, to to keep yourself up to date or to re skill or up skill. But then even that requires sacrifice at that point. Absolutely.

Absolutely. So focus focus on getting your foundation, you know, which is, I would say get have a strong mathematical skills, analytical skills, and strong communication skills and strong writing skills are three fundamental to be successful. Okay, so I wanted to do two things. One was I wanted to ask you that question to look at like the individual slivers of advice, but I want to now take your expertise and apply it more broadly in the Adventist ecosystem.

So as you look at the Adventist ecosystem as a whole, and perhaps when I say as a whole, I mean specifically the digital side of the Adventist ecosystem, where what are the primary gaps that you see that need to be filled? I think I think one place we are lacking is faster decision making process. Sometimes, you know, since most of our Adventist organizations either are nonprofit, or smaller profit organizations, right, the decision making process is very lengthy, and, and it's not quick and it's not faster, right. So therefore, that is one area, you know, we need to focus, you know, strong process, strong project management and project governance is required in most of our Adventist ministries.

I always feel that why are we not functioning like corporates, right. So therefore, there's a lot of scope for us to improve in terms of we operate like big corporates, think like big corporates, have efficient process and governance and, and execution of all your projects in a more efficient and faster way. The reason I say this is, you know, imagine, imagine, look, had we been take a worse prior COVID, how many lives could I be touched? We just weak, we just woke up post COVID.

Right. So therefore, now is the time and when the time comes, when the opportunity is at our door, we got to act fast, we got to act more professional. And, and we got to operate like what they call as the big corporates of America, right. That's all we need to operate.

And I see a lot of Adventist ministries are a little lagging. And then in the last point I want to touch is the touch of quality. You know, you know, we, we, okay, a simple website is fine. But no, it has to be very attractive, it has to communicate the message, it has to have all the elements of what people need.

So therefore, quality is also we need to, because people are not looking for services from us, but people are looking for quality services. And when I say quality services, everybody is selling Jesus. How are we going to be, how are we going to sell Jesus differently? And how do we differentiate ourselves in selling Jesus?

That is where is, is very important. And a lot of Adventist ministries should focus on efficient process, quick thinking, and then better quality in terms of executing all our projects. That quality is there in some of the ministries, I see it, the big ministries who have, but in the smaller medium scale and the, and the small scale Adventist ministries is missing those process and quality. On both of those points, and I'm thinking obviously larger ministries have the budget to execute a lot of that advice.

And that's why they're doing that. For smaller ministries who perhaps aren't there yet, are there some resources that you would direct people to that would help them think about these questions in, in a better way? Yeah. So one of the reason we Sabotech wanted to do is we do a lot of free consulting as well.

So, you know, talking to like-minded ministries, like, you know, there are many, you know, marketing ministries and Adventists. So consult with them. And, you know, we are here, you know, and, and a lot of other ministries. So one of the mistake I did when we started Sabotech, like, I did not consult with a lot of technical people in the market, in the market, because I was thinking, hey, this is Adventist ministries, they have nothing to do with, you know, but consulting with the people, it could be similar ministry or not even a similar ministry in the world, but you might get a lot of inferences, the lessons learned they have, the failures they made, some of the things worked well for them, right?

All these can be built into your planning so that you don't commit the same mistakes. That's very important. Our ministry should talk to each other well, so that, you know, for example, you know, I had a, I had great interest to start a vegan restaurant. What I'm now doing is I'm talking to all Adventist vegan restaurants and asking them few questions.

Hey, what's your profit margin? Right? Where do you source your raw materials? How do you do marketing?

How do you bring people? What are your, what are your men, men, men you look like? Right? What are your price points?

So, you know, as you talk to them, they share their experience, they share their failures, they share their, that's the knowledge base, and that's a typical project management. Any project management, the first thing you do is, is there a similar project which the organization has executed before? What is the lessons learned document from that project? That is your basis to move forward.

So, our ministry should talk to each other, share that experience, and get that knowledge as the foundation, and then launch your ministry. Yeah. That's, that's very good advice. That's very good advice.

I think if more people took that on board and applied that, I think that would lead to very different outcomes. So, just before we, before we wrap up, what would you say are some of the most interesting things happening in the Adventist digital space outside of Sabotec? So, what are the some of the things you see that are happening that you think are really exciting that are worth drawing attention to? I think, I think the general conference have now focused to translate more Ellen White books.

There is a lot of technology being used in that space. I could see that a lot of emphasis has been given on digital marketing on that space, digital marketing to promote our, our programs. I could see that. In fact, in the last week, Adventist ministries have come together to discuss about AI and ministry.

So, a lot of good things are happening in Adventist. Now, they could see how technology could really help them. And a lot of Adventist ministries are now thinking to take the prophecy more gamified way. So, they are now reaching the market, understanding what the market needs are and customizing our programs and then applying technology either as in the form of game or in the form of some kind of a gamification.

So, a lot of things are happening. A lot of things are happening. More ministries are required. As Jesus says, the harvest has arrived, the labor is of you.

So, we have few years left. So, we have to do, you know, I would say 100 or 200 X or 300 X the times of work. So, therefore, a lot of small Adventist ministries of technology have to come together, support the church, support our smaller ministries and achieve this. Because, you know, what the world has achieved in the last few years is what we have to achieve in a few months.

So... Yeah. Amen. Well, the last thing that I'll ask you is that if people want to reach out and connect with you, where can people find you?

Where should people look you up on the internet? Sure. You can go to sabotech.com website. Our email address is info at sabotech.com.

Our telephone number is 302-521-3834. You can reach out to us. You can write to us. We will be happy to provide guidance if they need or if they need any services.

We will be happy to provide those services to fasten the soon coming over of God. Thank you, Charles. I really appreciate you being on the show. Yes.

Thanks, Luke. Appreciate. Thanks for inviting me. God bless.