A pastel-coloured stroller stands folded behind a bedroom door. A box of tiny onesies sits untouched on the top shelf. Battery-operated toys that once filled the house with sound now lie silent under the bed, waiting for a child who has already outgrown them.

In homes with children, this scene repeats itself quietly every few months.

Babies outgrow clothes before parents can fully enjoy dressing them up. Walkers, cots, feeding chairs, books, and toys move from “essential” to “unused” in what feels like the blink of an eye. And yet, most of these items are far from unusable.

So they stay — packed into cupboards, stacked in corners, or eventually thrown away.

Parenting today often comes with a strange contradiction: families keep buying more for children who need things for less and less time.

The result is not just overflowing homes and repeated spending, but also an enormous amount of waste created by products designed for short phases of childhood.

For Kolkata-based entrepreneur and mother Swarna Daga Mimani, this was not just clutter — it was a problem waiting for a better solution.

What began as a personal observation during motherhood eventually became Second Hugs, an online platform where parents can buy and sell gently used baby and children’s products in a structured, trustworthy way.

The idea is simple: if a child has outgrown something that is still in good condition, why shouldn’t it find another home?

And increasingly, Indian parents seem ready for that shift.

When motherhood changed the way she looked at consumption

Swarna did not come from a conventional startup background. An electrical engineer from NIT Nagpur and an MBA graduate from IIM Bangalore, she had previously worked in manufacturing setups and later built her digital marketing company, Social Neeti.

But motherhood changed the way she looked at everyday consumption.

“I realised that there is a gap in the market,” she says. “Very few products that we use — the kids’ products — are used for a very short period of time before they become obsolete,” she tellsThe Better India.

“There was no structured place where we could make these products useful to someone else.”

Like many parents, she found herself surrounded by barely used baby essentials that no longer served a purpose at home but still had value. At the same time, she saw new parents repeatedly spending on products meant for only a short phase of childhood.

“That thought stayed with me,” she says. “What I no longer use could be a treasure for........

© The Better India