Meet Ridhima Agarwal | Product Owner (IT) & Founder of Mitti Parfum

We had the good fortune of connecting with Ridhima Agarwal and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Ridhima, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
Growing up as South Asian kids in the United States, the path in front of us was always fairly defined. Most of us are raised to pursue stability and become doctors, engineers, lawyers, follow the steady rhythm of a traditional career. The perfume industry was never something we saw people who looked like us in, let alone imagined building a brand within.
But as we grew older, something unexpected happened. The further we built our lives in America, the more we felt a quiet pull towards home. Toward our roots, our colors, our rituals, the tiny cultural nuances that shaped us but were slowly becoming distant. When you live far from where you come from, you begin to realize how fragile cultural memory can be. Traditions fade, languages soften, rituals get replaced by convenience. And we began asking ourselves a question: What pieces of our heritage will survive us? What will our children and their children inherit from where we come from? Scent became the answer in a way we never planned.

Neerav has always been deeply passionate about perfumery, and when we started exploring it together, we realized something profound: fragrance has an extraordinary power to transport us. A single note can take you back decades, to the smell of rain on warm earth, the jasmine in your grandmother’s courtyard, the incense during evening prayers, or the sweetness of festivals and family gatherings. These scents weren’t just smells. They were memories. And more like the identity that defined us. So what started as curiosity slowly turned into something more meaningful. We wanted to create fragrances that carry stories, fragrances that hold pieces of our culture, our nostalgia, and our lived experience between two worlds.

Mitti Parfum became our way of preserving those memories and sharing them with others. Each fragrance blends the past and the present: deeply rooted in South Asian heritage, but expressed through a modern lens that reflects who we are today. In many ways, the brand is our love letter to the homeland that shaped us even from thousands of miles away. And our hope is that every bottle carries not just a scent, but a story that reminds people where they come from, and how beautiful it is to hold onto it.

What should our readers know about your business?
By day, I work as a product owner at a financial institution where I lead digital product initiatives and focus on building scalable customer-first platforms. That world is structured, analytical, and a lot of strategy and problem solving.

But after work hours, my life shifts into something completely different. I become the co-founder of Mitti Parfum, our independent perfume house that my husband Neerav and I built from the ground up. In a small startup, titles don’t mean much, you end up wearing every hat imaginable. I handle marketing, sales, social media, content creation, customer communication, creative direction and brand strategy. Every campaign, every post, every customer interaction is something I’ve learned to do from scratch simply because I wanted to show up for the brand we believed in.

Neerav, who is the perfumer behind Mitti Parfum, leads the fragrance creation, product development, and operational side of the business. Together we combine creativity with strategy to bring our vision to life. Building a brand without a traditional roadmap has come with many challenges. We didn’t have mentors in the fragrance industry, so in many ways we had to become our own teachers. We’ve navigated failed bottle iterations, supplier issues, inventory shortages, and forecasting mistakes especially as demand sometimes surprised us faster than we expected. Each setback became part of the learning process.

Entrepreneurship has taught me resilience more than anything else. When you’re building something you deeply care about, you learn to adapt quickly, solve problems creatively, and keep moving forward even when the path isn’t clear.

What I’m most proud of is that Mitti Parfum was built with intention and heart. It represents not just a business, but a story, one that blends heritage, artistry, and modern identity. Balancing a corporate career while nurturing a growing brand hasn’t always been easy, but it has been incredibly meaningful. At the end of the day, both worlds shape who I am: the strategist during the day, and the storyteller and builder at night.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’d take them to Savannah. I have some wonderful college memories there, and it’s a city that always feels nostalgic to me. I love walking along the historic cobblestone streets and spending time on River Street by the water. Watching the boats pass by, exploring the small boutique shops, and just soaking in the charm of the city always brings back memories of simpler times with friends. Savannah has a warmth and character that makes it one of my favorite places to revisit.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
First and foremost, our deepest gratitude goes to our families. Like many families, they hoped that their children would have stability and opportunity paths that often looked like medicine, engineering, or other traditional careers. Choosing to build something creative and unconventional like a perfume house wasn’t the most obvious route, but their sacrifices, resilience, and belief in hard work made it possible for us to even dream this big.

We also want to honor the generations before us who unknowingly shaped the heart of what we do. So much of Mitti Parfum is inspired by memories that feel almost universal in South Asian homes and the traditions passed down without explanation. Those moments stayed with us long after we left home.

And of course, we are incredibly grateful to the community that has embraced us along the way- from early supporters who believed in our vision to the fragrance lovers who continue to champion independent brands and new voices in the industry. At the end of the day, Mitti Parfum isn’t just about us. It’s about the people, memories, and traditions that shaped us. In many ways, every bottle is a quiet tribute to where we come from and to the many hands and hearts that carried us here.

Website: https://www.mittiparfum.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mittiparfum/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ridhima-agarwal-b67ab829b/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mittiparfumusa/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MittiParfum

Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mittiparfum