Miki Agrawal’s business career has spanned New York pizza restaurant WILD, period-underwear company Thinx and bidet brand Tushy. Her consumer-product ventures have made menstruation and bathroom hygiene central subjects of their marketing, while her leadership at Thinx also drew scrutiny over workplace allegations she denied.
Banking and restaurant beginnings
Agrawal has described growing up in Montreal with a Japanese mother and an Indian father, then working in investment banking after college. She has said the September 11, 2001, attacks prompted her to reconsider her career and pursue interests that included business ownership.
Her first business was a New York pizza restaurant. WILD dates its opening to 2006 and says the business became entirely gluten-free in 2013. Agrawal has linked the restaurant idea to her own experiences with stomachaches and dietary restrictions.
Thinx and the workplace dispute
Agrawal co-founded Thinx with her twin sister and a friend. The company launched in 2013, selling absorbent underwear for menstruation and making discussion of periods part of its branding.
She stepped down as chief executive in 2017. In March that year, Chelsea Leibow, the company’s former head of public relations, filed a complaint with the New York City Commission on Human Rights alleging sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.
Agrawal denied the allegations. Thinx said it had commissioned an investigation that concluded the allegations had no legal merit. The dispute was settled confidentially in 2017.
In a personal statement following her departure, Agrawal acknowledged that she had not put human resources practices in place as the company grew. Thinx said it was recruiting a new chief executive and an HR executive and had engaged an interim HR professional.
Tushy’s overlapping development
Tushy developed alongside Agrawal’s work at Thinx. Agrawal said it raised its first capital in 2014 and that she focused more fully on the business after leaving Thinx in 2017.
The company sells bidet attachments that add a water spray to an existing toilet. Agrawal has described its goal as encouraging American customers to use water for bathroom cleaning.
On March 9, 2017, Tushy announced a $500,000 seed round led by Propulsion Capital, with participation from other investors. The company said the funding would support manufacturing, online sales, marketing and hiring.
Agrawal has described Tushy’s marketing strategy as combining product design, visual imagery and informal, relatable language. She said humor was a deliberate part of its approach to discussing bathroom habits, drawing on her experience marketing Thinx.
