Chapter One: Just Start

It's May 5th, 2020. It was one of those lockdown evenings. The kind where the air outside feels heavy with silence, and inside the house, everything just blends into one long blur of time. The world was still figuring out the pandemic. Streets were empty. We were all stuck indoors, not knowing what next.

I was at home in Coimbatore, living with my parents. I had just completed my Teach For India Fellowship, and was now working with a ed-tech company as their AI Program Lead, building curriculum to teach artificial intelligence to kids. It was interesting work, but deep down, I kept feeling a pull. A quiet voice in the back of my head that kept asking — is this it? Is this really what I want to be doing right now?

Because while I was teaching in schools, I had seen so clearly how broken some things were — especially access to technology. Now with COVID, things were even worse. So many non-profits and schools didn’t have digital tools, and I kept thinking — maybe this is the moment to do something. I didn’t know what exactly. But I had this strong feeling — this is the time to start.

That evening, I had just finished one of my online training sessions and walked out to the balcony. My dad was sitting there, as usual, with his tea. I don’t know what made me say it, but I just blurted out — “Appa, I’m thinking of starting something.”

I thought he’d resist. He had, in the past. When I first joined Zoho as a software engineer, he didn’t know what Zoho was. He was worried I wasn’t joining a big IT company like TCS or Infosys. But over time, when he saw how I was growing and when he started learning about Zoho himself, he was proud.

Then in 2018, when I told him I was quitting Zoho to join Teach For India and work in a government school, he was shocked. He just couldn’t understand it. It took him two full years to come to terms with that decision.

So now, I expected the same kind of reaction. But to my surprise, he simply nodded and said, “Yeah, why not? Try it out.”

I was genuinely caught off guard.

He said, “You’re at home, it’s the lockdown, you don’t have any loans or family pressure, just give yourself a year and see where it goes.”

That hit me. It was such a simple thing to say, but it meant the world to me.

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep. I was chatting with a friend online, telling her, “I think I’m going to start something.” We were joking about names. She teased me saying, “You love cheese so much, why don’t you name your company after some cheese?”

I laughed, but something about that stuck.

She mentioned the word “Zola”, like from Gorgonzola. And I liked how it sounded. At that time, I was thinking about education and tech, so I thought — why not call it EdZola?

I checked if the domain was available — and edzola.com was free.

I immediately bought it.

I didn’t even overthink. I created an email ID — support@edzola.com — and I sent myself an email.

It just said:

That was it.

No pitch deck. No business plan. No team. Just a name, a domain, and a deep urge to build something that mattered. I didn’t know where it would go. I just knew I had to start.

And that’s how EdZola was born — on a quiet balcony, in the middle of a pandemic, with a bit of cheese, a lot of hope, and a heart full of questions. I was that crazy person to name a company after cheese. I promised myself that one day when EdZola is somewhat successful, I would tell this story to the world. Looks like that day has finally come. :)