Timeline
- 1994Born Karthika Agathiyan on 7 May, according to the profiles that carry a date.Bharat Fast places her birth in Theni, HousePulse in Thanjavur.
- 2008Begins hosting Sol Vilaiyattu on Makkal TV, a role she holds until 2011.She was in her early teens when the show began.
- 2020Cooku with Comali season 2 premieres on 14 November, with her as one of the cooks.The season was hosted by Rakshan.
- 2021Wins Cooku with Comali season 2 at the grand finale on 14 April.
- 2020sAppears in the web series Parachute and co-manages the Theatre D channel.The channel's best known series is Oru Oorla Oru Raja.
- 2025Enters Bigg Boss Tamil 9 on day one, 5 October, as one of twenty four housemates.
- 2025Evicted on day 84, after 83 days in the house, finishing tenth.
Who Kani Thiru is
Kani Thiru is the screen name of Karthika Agathiyan, a Tamil television presenter and actress. She is the eldest daughter of Agathiyan, the director who won the National Film Award for Best Direction for Kadhal Kottai in 1996, and she grew up in a household where films, scripts and sets were ordinary. Her career, though, did not begin in cinema. It began in a television studio, in front of a camera, as a host.[1][2][5]
The role that made her a household name was not acting either. It was a cooking show. Cooku with Comali pairs celebrity contestants with comedians who sabotage and assist them in equal measure, and season 2 ran from November 2020 to April 2021 with her as one of the cooks. She won it, and the win changed her public standing more than any serial could have.[3][6]
Her reputation on screen is built on composure. Profiles describe her as calm, measured and quick, and the phrase that appears most often is level headed. In a medium that rewards volume, she is the contestant who wins arguments by not raising her voice, and that has become the thing audiences expect from her.[1][2]
She is also, by the standards of Tamil television, unusually well educated and unusually quiet about it. Profiles place her at Kumaraguru College of Technology in Coimbatore, and the work she does on Theatre D, a channel about history and culture, suggests the reading is real rather than a pose.[1][2]
Family: the Agathiyans
Her father Agathiyan was a significant director in Tamil cinema in the 1990s. Kadhal Kottai, released in 1996, won him the National Film Award for Best Direction and the National Film Award for Best Screenplay, and it was the first Tamil film to win the direction award. He also wrote and directed Gokulathil Seethai and Kaadhal Kavithai, and worked as a lyricist and producer.[5]
Her sisters are both in the industry. Vijayalakshmi Agathiyan, known after marriage as Vijayalakshmi Feroz, is an actress who appeared on Bigg Boss Tamil season 2 and later won Survivor Tamil. Niranjani Ahathian works as a costume designer. The three sisters are often photographed together, and the family name carries weight in Tamil film circles that a viewer outside the state would not recognise.[2][4]
That inheritance is a useful thing to be precise about. Kani Thiru did not enter television through her father's productions, and there is no record of him casting her. What the family gave her was familiarity with a set and an ease in front of a camera, which is not nothing, and a surname that opened doors in an industry where surnames still do.[1][5]
Her mother Radha died in 2016, according to Bharat Fast. The detail appears in the profile's family table and nowhere else in the coverage reviewed for this entry, and it is the sort of thing that only becomes public when a person chooses to speak about it.[1]
Makkal TV and the years as a host
She began hosting Sol Vilaiyattu on Makkal TV in 2008 and stayed with the show until 2011. She was fourteen when it started. A children's or youth programme on a regional channel is a small job with a large audience, and doing it for three years teaches the thing that acting cannot: how to keep talking when the autocue fails.[2]
The Makkal TV period is the least documented part of her career, and it is worth pausing on why. Tamil television archives from the late 2000s are poorly preserved, regional channels do not maintain public episode libraries, and a presenter's early work disappears when the channel's tapes do. What survives is the credit and the dates, which is more than most people get.[2]
After 2011 she stepped away from television for a stretch. The profiles describe a break rather than a reason, and no interview reviewed here explains it. She returned in 2020 for Cooku with Comali, which is a gap of nearly a decade in a medium where a year away is usually fatal. That she came back and won is the most interesting fact about her career, and it is the one the coverage least explains.[1][2]
Hosting is also the skill she carried into reality television. A presenter knows how a set works, when a pause is being engineered for effect, and how to give an answer that is short enough to be usable. In a house full of people performing for camera time, that knowledge is an advantage.[2]
Cooku with Comali and the 2021 win
Cooku with Comali is a Star Vijay format in which celebrity cooks are paired with comedians who interfere with their cooking. Season 2 premiered on 14 November 2020, was hosted by Rakshan, and ran to a grand finale on 14 April 2021. Kani Thiru was declared the winner.[3][6]
The show is a comedy first and a cooking competition second, which is why winning it says something about a person's temperament rather than their kitchen skills. The comedians are there to derail the cooks, and the cooks who do well are the ones who can absorb chaos without losing the thread. Her season is remembered for exactly that: a contestant who stayed calm while everyone around her was being funny.[3]
The victory gave her a fan base that has stayed with her since. It also reframed her from a presenter into a television personality, which is a broader and more valuable category. Presenters are hired. Personalities are cast.[2][3]
There is a particular kind of fame that comes from a show like this in Tamil Nadu. The audience is large, the voting is public, and the winner is treated as a known quantity for years afterwards. Four years later, when Bigg Boss Tamil 9 was being cast, she was still one of the most recognisable women on the channel's roster.[1][2]
Acting: Parachute, Valli Mayil and selective choices
Her acting work has been sparse by the standards of Tamil television. She appeared in Parachute, a Tamil web series, and has been reported in connection with Valli Mayil, a film directed by Suseenthiran with Vijay Antony in the lead. Neither credit is a starring vehicle, and the profiles treat them as a selective slate rather than a film career.[1][2][4]
The word selective appears in every account of her, and it is probably accurate. Tamil television offers a presenter with her profile a steady stream of serials, and taking them would mean five nights a week for years. She has not done that. Whether the choice was deliberate or simply the result of other work is not something she has explained in public.[1]
The acting she has done sits inside a career that is mostly about talking. A host who acts occasionally is in a different position from an actress who hosts, and the difference shows in how she is cast: supporting parts, ensemble pieces, roles that use her presence rather than test her range.[2]
Valli Mayil is the more interesting of the two credits because Suseenthiran is a director with a real body of work, and a film with Vijay Antony reaches a mass audience that a web series does not. The profiles describe it as a reported project rather than a released one, which is why this page does not give it a date.[1]
Theatre D and the history work
She co-manages Theatre D, a Tamil YouTube channel built around history, culture and storytelling. Its best known series is Oru Oorla Oru Raja, a narrative format that uses the channel's interest in the past to tell stories rather than to lecture. The channel is a family operation, and it is the clearest evidence that her interests run beyond the cooking show circuit.[1][2]
This is the part of her work that does not fit the usual Tamil television profile. A channel about history and culture is expensive to make, slow to grow and hard to monetise, and the audience for it is not the audience that votes on a reality show. That she does it anyway says something about what she wants to be known for.[1]
It also gives her a second identity that survives a bad season. Contestants whose entire public profile is a reality show have nothing when the show ends. A channel, a body of work and a family name in the industry are more durable assets than a fan base, and she has all three.[2]
The channel's content is in Tamil and aimed at Tamil speakers, which limits its reach and deepens its relationship with the audience it does have. That trade is common in regional digital media and rarely discussed, and it explains why a presenter with a large television audience can still be unknown outside the state.[1]
Marriage and family life
She is married to Thiru Krishnamoorthy, a film director known for Theeradha Vilaiyattu Pillai and Naan Sigappu Manithan. The couple have two daughters. She has kept her family life largely out of the coverage, and the profiles state the facts without elaboration, which is the way she appears to want it.[1][2]
Her husband's career is in the commercial mainstream of Tamil cinema, and the two of them have worked in the same industry without appearing to work together. There is no public record of a collaboration, and no interview reviewed here in which she discusses the marriage in detail.[1]
The daughters appear in profiles only as a number. That is worth noting because the Bigg Boss format often turns family into content, and a contestant with young children is usually asked to talk about them on camera. How much of that she chose to do is not described in any written source reviewed for this entry.[2]
She has also been described as a mother who balances work and home, a phrase that appears in nearly every profile of a working woman in Indian entertainment and tells the reader almost nothing. The more specific fact is the one above: two children, a husband in the industry, and a career she has kept deliberately slow.[1][2]
Bigg Boss Tamil 9
Bigg Boss Tamil 9 launched on 5 October 2025 with Vijay Sethupathi as host and twenty four housemates. Kani Thiru was an original entrant on day one and was introduced in the housemates list as an actress and television personality who had acted in Parachute. The season ran for 105 days and ended on 18 January 2026.[2][4]
She stayed for 83 days and was evicted on day 84, at the end of the thirteenth week, finishing tenth. That is a long run by any measure: she survived more than three quarters of the season and left only when the house was down to its last ten.[2][4]
Tenth place is an awkward result to write about because it is neither a triumph nor a failure. She outlasted fourteen other contestants and was not in the final. In the arithmetic of a reality show, that makes her a strong mid game player who could not convert into a finalist, and the coverage of her eviction treated it as a surprise rather than a formality.[2]
The season itself was one of the more turbulent in the franchise's Tamil run, with two housemates ejected on the same day and a wildcard, Divya Ganesh, winning from a day 28 entry. Against that background, a quiet contestant finishing tenth is a footnote. What she takes from it is a second large audience in five years, which is more than most people get from one.[4]
Money and what is known about it
Her net worth is not publicly disclosed. Bharat Fast says so explicitly and lists the likely income streams rather than a figure: television appearances, reality show fees, acting work, digital revenue from Theatre D, brand collaborations and event appearances. HousePulse does not publish a number either.[1][2]
That is the honest position, and it is more common than the reader might expect. Tamil television personalities rarely disclose fees, the channels do not publish contracts, and the numbers that circulate on fan pages are guesses built on other guesses. This page does not repeat them.[1]
What can be said is that her earning has probably risen twice, once after the Cooku with Comali win in 2021 and once after Bigg Boss in 2026. Both were large audiences, and both came with the kind of visibility that brand teams pay for. The size of the increase is not public.[2]
There is also a family dimension that profiles tend to skip. Her father's films are part of Tamil cinema's canon, and the family's standing gives her access to work that does not appear in a fee table. That is not money, but in the Indian film industry it functions as credit.[1][5]
What has not been confirmed
Her birthplace is disputed. Bharat Fast gives Theni, HousePulse gives Thanjavur, and neither cites a document. Her date of birth, 7 May 1994, is consistent across profiles but is still a profile figure rather than a record, and the year appears with an approximate marker in one of them.[1][2]
The education claim is single sourced. Bharat Fast places her at Kumaraguru College of Technology in Coimbatore and describes her as a graduate, and no other profile reviewed here confirms the college. It is plausible and it is unverified.[1]
Her film work is thinner than the profiles imply. Valli Mayil is described as a reported project in the same profile that lists it, and no release information was found. Parachute is confirmed as a web series credit by the Bigg Boss season page, but her role in it is not described anywhere.[1][4]
One factual error in the source material is worth correcting here. Bharat Fast states that Bigg Boss Tamil 9 was hosted by Kamal Haasan. It was hosted by Vijay Sethupathi, as the season's own record shows. Kamal Haasan hosted earlier seasons of the Tamil franchise, which is presumably where the confusion comes from.[1][4]
Her height, weight and net worth are not published by her, and the figures on aggregator sites disagree or do not exist. Nothing in this entry asserts them.[1][2]
Questions about this entry
Who is Kani Thiru?
Kani Thiru is the working name of Karthika Agathiyan, a Tamil television host and actress and the eldest daughter of the director Agathiyan.
What is Kani Thiru known for?
Kani Thiru is the working name of Karthika Agathiyan, a Tamil television host and actress and the eldest daughter of the director Agathiyan.
When was Kani Thiru born?
Kani Thiru was born in 7 May 1994.
How current is this entry?
It was last updated on 6 November 2026, carries 1 revisions and cites 6 sources. The entry has been checked by the editorial team and carries the verified badge.