Meet the hands behind Food Fusion

Their main channel now has a golden button as it has surpassed 1 million subscribers

KARACHI: With the audience for YouTube constantly growing in Pakistan and many local channels being awarded the coveted YouTube Play Button, there is an emerging brand, Food Fusion, that has grabbed the attention of the audience.

Asad Memon and Saima Asad, the pioneers of Food Fusion, a channel that showcases delicious recipes have announced that they have been awarded a silver play button for their new Food Fusion Kids channel. The main channel now has a golden button as it has surpassed 1 million subscribers.

“When we got married as a young couple we got really frustrated when we had to watch hours-long shows just to know how to cook decent daal. Both of us have been experimenting with food for a very long time,” said Asad Memon, founder and CEO of Food Fusion as he explained the story behind his food channel.



Having worked in one of the largest digital media agencies of the country, Memon quit everything to start the venture. His initial plan was to start a confectionary business but later realised how establishing the entity would entail the risk of losing more. His plan B was to start his own cooking channel on YouTube as Ramazan was fast approaching and the ban on YouTube had just been lifted in 2015.

“This was the biggest risk we took in our life as both Saima and I left our jobs to bring up this baby,” says Memon as he reminisces the beginning of Food Fusion.

By having brands sponsor videos in exchange for the products to be shown and YouTube and Facebook paying when an ad is shown, creating recipes for restaurants and producing videos for other clients, Food Fusion is now at breakeven after being in existence since 2015.

“Until very recently we had been continuously pumping in all our savings to build Food Fusion. There was a point that I had to sell my car to pay salaries but 2019 brought us to our break even and finally, we are able to pay our bills,” commented on Memon when asked about the profit he makes from a venture that is available digitally.

As social media has taken a huge leap not just Pakistan but worldwide, it does not come as a surprise that businesses take advantage of this social media outreach and make their startups flourish.

“We have noticed a paradigm shift on the digital platform, with Youtube opening just before we launched and new age media companies opening almost every day, Pakistan has finally realised the importance of good quality content. Brands have started to realise how powerful digital media can be. Prices of smartphones going down and introduction of 4G has completely changed the game,” Memon told The Express Tribune.



The content creators behind Food Fusion are working towards building their channel into a brand as at the end of the day they want to be known as a brand and not just a YouTube channel. Memon believes that his focus is on TV as competition and that other channels that create content on YouTube are the friends that help each other.

“I believe at this time all digital content creators are working for one mutual goal of bringing the advertising dollars from TV to digital medium. The best part about digital is that you don’t have to prove anything, it’s the audience that proves that you are doing a good job or not,” Asad Memon commented.

Previously, Pakistani YouTube channels including Kitchen with Amna, Maulana Tariq Jameel, Irfan Junejo, Memoona Muslima and P4Pakao which have all surpassed 100,000 subscribers and been praised for it by YouTube with Play Buttons.