Prabhat and Ashima run @probbyandashi, an Instagram page built on a friendship that goes back years before the account existed. It started in 2019 as The Food of Prashu, when the two were broke interns working through a list of Zomato’s forty legendary city restaurants.
- You both have full-time jobs. When do you actually get time for content creation?
- Who first suggested starting the page, and what was the other person’s reaction?
- Where did “Probby and Ashi” come from, and why not “Ashi and Probby”?
- Would you ever rename the page?
- Who plans, and who just shows up and asks what the plan is?
- How do you approve content? What happens if one of you doesn’t like a video?
- It’s Friendship Day, say one thing about each other you’d normally not say out loud.
The content has since moved well past food into fitness, travel and the everyday reality of two people in their late twenties with full-time jobs. What hasn’t changed is this: neither has quit their job, and neither creates content because it pays.
TCI spoke to Prabhat and Ashima ahead of Friendship Day, less to mark the occasion than to understand how a friendship built over shared meals turned into one of Mumbai’s more recognisable creator duos. It still runs entirely as a two-person operation, squeezed into weekends and whatever hours their jobs leave over.
What comes through in the conversation is how the page actually works: who does what, and what breaks down when jobs and content collide. There’s no team, no dedicated shoot days, and the effort shows up less in anything they claim outright than in how openly they talk about the work itself.
You both have full-time jobs. When do you actually get time for content creation?
Prabhat: It is super difficult but we try to manage it on the weekends only, and sometimes post office, like late night, maybe if a brand wants a script then we discuss that after work. Majorly the shoots and all, this happens on the weekend because that’s the only space when we get to shoot properly.
Ashima: Some days, if something is very urgent, we also figure out that maybe we shoot early in the morning or late in the evening. It’s also now not just about the shoot, it’s also about closing the deal, the script, everything. So that is happening daily, to be honest, it’s like we are doing two jobs. I think brands have also been very cooperative.
Who first suggested starting the page, and what was the other person’s reaction?
Prabhat: I think Ashima only suggested that we should start a page. Ashi’s from Chandigarh and I’m from Pune, and we both met as interns at VCOM18. We didn’t really have cooks, we couldn’t afford to have cooks at home in our Bombay homes. Eventually I think we just thought about it, that let’s start documenting our journey.
Ashima: The backstory to what I remember was, we were interns at the same office, so a lot of people initially were just our office friends following us. It was like Probby would have the same story of what I ate, what he ate, then I would put the same story. I remember this discussion happening, why can’t you guys just have a common page, it’s easier for us to follow because you go out together anyway. It was back in 2019, there were no reels or anything, it was more about documenting it. Zomato used to have this legendary restaurants list, some odd 40 restaurants which had been there for like years, and we were like, we will cover all of these. It became like a mission, I think we did 10 or 12 when lockdown happened.
Where did “Probby and Ashi” come from, and why not “Ashi and Probby”?
Ashima: The page was called The Food of Prashu, because it’s Prabhat and Ashima, so we just took the initial names. They used to call me Ashu and Prabhat, and we wanted to connect it to that because when we were changing the username we didn’t want it to be so different, otherwise now it would be Ashi and Probby. So that is why, to keep it close to Prashu, we wanted to keep it Probby and Ashi.
Prabhat: When we were The Food of Prashu, people used to think there’s only one person called Prashu. Sometimes they thought this person is called Pranshu. So we just said, okay, let’s simplify it, Probby and Ashi.
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Would you ever rename the page?
Ashima: Not now, I mean we have changed it enough already. Initially we kept it just Food of Prashu, then we thought, okay, we can do so much more beyond food. There’s so much more to both of us than food. Over the years we also evolved, Probby got into fitness, I got into fitness, our work changed. This is the age of doing side quests.
Who plans, and who just shows up and asks what the plan is?
Prabhat: I think it’s pretty equal. The way we’ve divided it is that Ashi takes care of the brand side and I take care more of the scripting and editing side. She’s great at shoots, but she takes a lot more responsibility because with all the people involved there’s so much coordination work, she’s an absolute master at that.
Ashima: I have a remote job so I was able to give in that much time because I had that kind of flexibility. Till today, we’re just a team of two, we don’t have anybody helping us out, which is also sad, because we could have grown this so much more.
How do you approve content? What happens if one of you doesn’t like a video?
Prabhat: Ashi is the boss. I always take Ash’s approval. I like to think that Ashi is the final boss and she’s the final approver.
Ashima: The right way to put it is, I just feel I have an eye for aesthetics, so I think, okay, this should look a certain way. I’m never very happy with a video, I always think something could have been better. And sometimes you think a video isn’t good and suddenly it does a million views. I’ve been proven wrong a lot of times, so now I just think, okay, just post it, we’ll see.
It’s Friendship Day, say one thing about each other you’d normally not say out loud.
Ashima: There’s no Probby without Ashi. There is Probby-and-Ashi. That’s the beauty of it, and the fact that I get to do it with Probby, I would not do it with anyone else. He’s like my moral compass and I bring the fun and the whimsy to it, it’s a very beautiful balance. My advice is, if you have a best friend and you both complement each other, that beautiful friendship can turn into such a good partnership.
Prabhat: I’m just so grateful to have Ashi in my life because she truly dreams big. This year, for my birthday, I’m not a big guy on birthdays, I was like no big deal, and it was already Jan-Feb, very late to plan for Japan and all, but Ashi took that effort. She said, you know what, we can do this. She really dreams big and gets it executed. That’s why I’m super grateful to have her in my life, otherwise I would just call it a day, but she really makes it big.
