Most people with more than 4.1 million subscribers would guard creative control jealously. Iftekhar Rafsan has done the opposite. In his newest series, the man better known as Rafsan the ChotoBhai has handed the wheel to a line-up of international YouTubers, many of them the faces he grew up watching, and let them decide what he cooks, what he eats and where in the world he does it.
"I wanted a series where it's like, YouTubers control my life, right? It's like a cross collaboration with multiple creators."
One challenge, many passports
The original plan was to shoot everything at home in Bangladesh. Instead, it turned into a travelling show. Each creator sets a challenge, and Rafsan goes to the country tied to that creator to complete it, often alongside the biggest local name there.
Episode one featured Pakistani YouTuber Ducky Bhai. Uncle Roger, the alter ego of Malaysian comedian Nigel Ng, sent him to Malaysia, where he took on the challenge with Ms Qiwiie, whom Rafsan calls the country's current number one creator. What exactly Uncle Roger asked for is being kept under wraps for now, though we're pretty sure it involves fried rice. Rafsan describes the episodes as "very cultural".
For food vlogger Mark Wiens's challenge, the trail led to Kenya, where Rafsan says Wiens spent eight years at school. There he teamed up with The Roaming Chef, a former Kenyan rugby player turned chef and creator. "In every country, I went there and did it," he says. "It's a bit connected. Slightly."
Bringing them to Dhaka
He has a longer game in mind. Several names on the list, including Uncle Roger and Golden Balance, have never been to Bangladesh, and Rafsan wants to change that. He is quick to point out that Uncle Roger's wife, Sabrina, has Bangladeshi heritage. If the episodes perform well, he hopes they will be interested, and the invitation will be hard to turn down.
He has form as a host. In 2022, he welcomed Emirati creator Khalid Al-Ameri to his home for iftar, and last year Pakistani actress Hania Aamir sat down to a meal cooked by his mother in a vlog that won warm reactions on both sides of the border.
Three languages, three thumbnails
The series was shot in English. The day before launch, he had the whole thing dubbed into Bangla, then into Urdu with a voice artist he found on Fiverr, so that it could reach Ducky Bhai's Pakistani audience with its own title, thumbnail and voice.
It was never meant to be a series at all. A partner at YouTube advised him to split what had been planned as a single video into episodes, because series tend to outperform one-offs. To keep viewers from drifting, each episode opens with a quick recap. Episode two will lean on Uncle Roger's and Ms Qiwiie's faces in the thumbnail to pull in their fans, then catch them up on the story so far "in less than 10 seconds".
Anyone expecting polished knife skills may be disappointed, and that is by design.
"Honestly speaking, I'm not the best cook," he admits. "That's what makes it really fun, because when I'm cooking, even if I mess up, that's also great. The audience really enjoys it. But in some cases, if it's good, I freak out myself. So, every reaction is very genuine."
The only parts he plans are the bookends. "I just know the starting and the ending, what will happen. Everything in between, we try to stay on roll." The 13-minute first episode was cut down from around an hour and a half of footage.
"Financially, a very dumb move"
Ask him what he gets out of it, and the answer is disarmingly blunt.
"Being super honest, financially, this is a very dumb move, making this entire series," he says. "You can't make back the money at all. For a million views, you'll probably make 300 dollars on YouTube. So, it's not enough."
So why bother? "Since childhood, I always wanted to be an international YouTuber." Collaborations, he reasons, bring audiences from different countries together in one place. He also has something to prove.
"Being a local creator, when I started, many people said that it's not possible, right? Usually, from international, you can get more local. So, I really want to do that, that someone from Bangladesh can actually be a competitor in this field. And I'll make it happen for sure."