Meet the real ‘Petuk Couple’

People say the way to reach someone's heart is through their stomach. It may sound funny but it is true for us - the Bengali clan. Two epicures from this proud clan have successfully tugged at our heartstrings with their scrumptious food reviews, recipes and even travel vlogs.

Rasif Shafique and Ridhima Khan Ipsha, popularly known as 'Petuk Couple', are the epicures among Bangladeshi YouTubers that fit our description. 

From Facebook to Instagram, the couple is spreading happiness among millions of people through the internet with their informative and joyful content. One might argue that their spectrum of content has created a rage on social media, defining them as influencers as well for their charismatic personality. 

The dynamic couple engaged in a candid conversation with The Business Standard and shared with us insights from their journey as one of the most competent vloggers in Bangladesh. 

The first question that popped in our minds is why they named their channel 'Petuk Couple'. 

Answering this, Rasif said, "Most people already know us for our love of food and it has been this way from the very beginning. We loved to eat and used to watch different videos showcasing different cuisines and travel vlogging. One of our friends had a cooking channel on Youtube and shared her experience of using this platform. These nudged us into opening our YouTube channel."

He added, "One night we were discussing names for our channel. Ipsha said that we are 'petuk' and a couple. That was when we decided to name our channel 'Petuk Couple'." 

Vlogging predominant comes off as an easy task. We asked them if it really is so. According to the couple, vlogging is all about how much effort the content creator wants to put into the video. "Initially, it took us ten days to edit a video. Now it doesn't take as much. It's a subjective matter and depends on one's skills and efforts," they stated.

Speaking about a memorable incident, Rasif and Ipsha enthusiastically recalled their first day of shooting. 

"We went to a restaurant and started vlogging but suddenly, the restaurant employees came forward and forbade us from shooting a video as only taking photos was allowed. We asked them if we can only take videos of the food and they agreed, but warned us not to capture anything else. This was a memorable and quite thrilling experience," they told this correspondent.

Petuk Couple has surpassed 480,000 subscribers on YouTube, 153,000 followers on Instagram and 1,100,000 followers on Facebook. We asked them how the overwhelming response so far has made them feel.

Ipsha replied, "Alhamdulillah! I consider this a blessing. Two years ago when we started our journey on these online platforms, we never imagined that we would receive such overwhelming responses and adoration from our followers. Our feelings cannot be expressed in words. We're just extremely grateful for this." 

Along with food vlogging, Rasif and Ipsha also do travel vlogs. They have a whole food vlog series dedicated to Indonesian cuisine. We asked them which they preferred to vlog more - food or travel? They answered that they could not choose only one as they love both these activities.
The couple enjoys travelling to new places and exploring new cuisines at the same time.
 
With all the success and love, comes criticism. Speaking of this, they said, "We believe that criticism is a part of the learning curve. Criticism can be both constructive and baseless. We always welcome constructive criticism as this helps us better evaluate our videos and correct mistakes to improve our quality of content. For the baseless ones, we simply ignore them."

As the interview came to an end, Petuk Couple filled us in about their future plans of travelling the whole world with the aim of sharing their gastronomic and travel adventures with their viewers.

As words of gratitude to Petuk Couple's millions of viewers, Rasif and Ipsha said that they owe all their success to their followers and well-wishers.

"We are extremely thankful for all the love and support from our viewers. Without them, we could not have been in this position today. We consider our viewers a part of our family and we love our big family very much!" the couple happily said.