About Us

Mrs. Anuja Kohli Mariwala, has a passion for both education and learning, and has been working as an Education Consultant in Mumbai for over 15 years. Anuja blends rigor with a very real commitment to people. After an early engineering path and a corporate career, she built Zest for Life, guiding students through global admissions with a focus on confidence, ethics, and fit.

Prior to embarking on an educational counselling career, Ms. Anuja Kohli Mariwala has worked extensively with schools and teenage children, both in a voluntary capacity, and under the aegis of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). She has conducted leadership seminars and mentored students across schools and colleges in Kerala. As both Regional Chair, and National Co-Chair for Education for Young Indians, the youth wing of CII, she has had many opportunities to nurture teenage identities.

She began her career in the US as an Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems Engineer after completing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Working throughout her graduate education, she completed her Master’s degree in Management Science from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. She worked as a management consultant specializing in telecommunication, and then moved onto Procter and Gamble India. Driven by creativity and an entrepreneurial instinct, she established five of her own businesses. A certified Pilates as well as a Sports Yoga instructor, she continued to pursue her passion in fitness and health.

She is also @thepeppercook, a successful Instagram and online blogger who focusses on real, homemade, simple food with fresh, cost effective local ingredients. She started The Pepper Cook Studio (a space shared with the Zest for Life office) in Mumbai, where the long term focus is to extend her passion for education and learning to conducting vocational classes for migrant and domestic workers, to upscale their skills. She is also founder of The Pepper Cook Seva Foundation which supports a volunteer-run community kitchen that operates inside the Pepper Cook Studio in South Mumbai. Inspired by the langars of Sikh Gurudwaras and the idea of selfless service—or Seva—Pepper Cook Seva Kitchen feeds Mumbai’s hungriest communities. It also reduces food wastage by converting excess stock from supermarkets, food companies and farmers into tasty, wholesome meals for underserved communities. Presently, the Pepper Cook Seva Foundations cooks and feeds over 30,000 children a month. And over the last 5 years, more than 6,50,000 meals have been distributed to slums across Mumbai.