Arumugam : An Indian YouTuber in his Sixties, Influencing Viewers with his Unique Cooking

YouTube has been a blessing for the content creators, and for those, who had never thought that they would face the camera. Now, millions of people are seeing and liking them. In the past five years, YouTube has changed the lives of millions of content creators from different fields, including music, dance, acting makeup, fashion, travelling as well as cooking. One such content creator and one of the most viewed YouTuber is Arumugam. Though the channel is created by his son, A Gopinath, the protagonist of the channel is Arumugam.

A Gopinath is a native of Tiruppur, a small town near Coimbatore in western Tamil Nadu. He earned a diploma in electronics and communication at the age of 20 and started working at a local cable service provider. He then moved to Chennai and began to work for a nameologist, where he edited and uploaded videos on YouTube for the company. After a few months, he left the job at the nameologist and joined the Tamil film industry. He worked as an assistant director in a few small-budget Tamil films, but none of his films got to see the face of daylight. After struggling in the field of film-making for over four years, he returned back to his village in 2016.

Gopinath’s father Arumugam, a building painter, most of the time used to cook food for his family as his wife worked as a full-time tailor in a garment factory. Gopinath had already seen many cookery videos on YouTube. So, looking at his father cooking, the 27-years old Gopinath decided to film his father and put his video on YouTube. For that, he created a channel named ‘Village Food Factory’.

Gopinath made videos of his father cooking food and edited it accordingly. The videos went viral in no time, and people started liking the content. The uniqueness of the content grabbed the attention of most of the people, as Arumugam did not cook the food in a fancy kitchen with ultra-modern tools, but in an open place in the farms and jungle, that too with limited resources.

Arumugam sets up a traditional homely earthen stove and big wide utensils to cook the food. The channel received huge appreciation from its audience. In fact, by November 2016, the duo uploaded over 42 videos on the channel that gained over 66000 subscribers for the channel. In a span of four-five months, the channel had also gained over 30 million views and earned over 2.5 lakh rupees.

According to Arumugam, he received an 8000 rupees cheque the very first time as the earning from his videos, followed by a 45000 rupees cheque in the next month, and the number continued to increase.

To make the videos look better every single time, the father-son duo keeps changing the locations and try to add new-unique elements to it. Arumugam’s wife and his younger son also help him with his videos.

The family is entirely focussed on the channel, where Gopinath’s wife and mother do the pre-cooking preparation, Gopinath films the video and edits it, whereas his father and brother cook in the video. There is minimal talk in the video, but the detailed cooking helps the audience to see the whole process properly. The channel has helped the father-son duo reach even the international audience. According to Gopinath, one day a white man recognised his father in a flight and praised his work.

Gopinath intends to make this channel his full-time job and has already covered over 25% of south Indian dishes in the videos. Currently, the father-son are posting one video a week. The future plans of the two include establishing a restaurant in their native place.

YouTube has become the biggest source of income for many content creators. The idea like Village Food Factory is getting popular among people for its rawness and authenticity. Village Food Factory is among the top ten food channels in India, and currently, has over 250 videos and 3 million subscribers.