Whenever Vijaya Haldiya would host guests at her home, her dishes would be the star of the party. Everyone would ask her to write a recipe book.

But her answer was always the same — “I will do it once my children grow up.”

At the age of 55, when her children had grown up, it was her time to shine.

With her daughter Apeksha’s help, she created a Facebook page named ‘Zayka ka Tadka by Vijay Haldiya’.

“I [also] set up a WordPress site for my mother and helped her get some followers. In four months, the group had 30,000 followers,” says Apeksha.

Eventually, these expanded to a live cooking platform. Today, Zayka ka Tadka has over 9 million followers across its social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and Facebook.

Seeing the rising popularity of the page, Apeksha quit her sports management job in 2016 and joined her mother in taking the platform to heights.

The duo’s USP is keeping it raw and real. Apeksha visits different homes across the country and showcases a mother on a live video every day.

So far, they have showcased 600–800 mothers on their platform, which aims to give confidence to mothers and help them gain recognition.

For example, a 90-year-old grandmother cooked a recipe live on the channel, supported by her walker. “She was so happy as she finally felt recognised.”

“Many of our mothers have started small home cooking businesses after they were featured here, and some have used recipes from our platform,” says Apeksha.

Vijay says, “Age is just a number. You should have the courage to go after your dreams. My life has just started post-60, and seeing so many mothers on our channel and reading their comments gives me so much happiness.”