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 someone.”
In September 2024, she officially launched Second Hugs as a bootstrapped venture. The platform today caters to parents across Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities in India and focuses exclusively on baby and children’s essentials.
When motherhood revealed how quickly children outgrow their belongings, Swarna saw an opportunity hidden in plain sight.
The platform includes products across categories like clothes, toys, books, cots, prams, walkers, and more for children aged 0 to 12 years.
But Swarna says the larger goal was never just resale.
“We are trying to create a smart parenting, circular economy, lesser carbon footprint kind of a behavioural shift,” she explains. “We’re surprised a lot of parents are adapting to that lifestyle.”
Breaking the hesitation around pre-loved products
In India, second-hand furniture or electronics may be common, but pre-loved children’s products still come with hesitation.
For many parents, concerns around hygiene, quality, and trust become immediate barriers.
Swarna acknowledges this openly.
“There are three parts to this — trust, hygiene, and mindset,” she says. “People come with a mindset of buying new products for their kids.”
The challenge, she explains, was not just building a platform but changing behaviour.
To address those concerns, Second Hugs built systems around verification and buyer protection. Sellers upload photos and videos of products, which are screened before listing.
Payments are held temporarily after purchase so buyers can inspect items once delivered. The platform also offers refunds if products arrive damaged or do not match their description.
Over time, Swarna says, many first-time users become repeat buyers.
“When they visit our site, they realise these are almost as good as new,” she says. “Sometimes the products are new as well.”
By addressing concerns around quality and hygiene, Second Hugs is helping parents rethink what ‘new’ really means.
That includes unopened gifts, duplicate toys, or products with damaged packaging that can no longer be sold conventionally despite being unused.
The platform also expanded beyond parents selling personal items. Today, wholesalers and vendors can list new products too, creating a mix of gently used and unused essentials at lower prices.
“We want to be a one-stop shop,” Swarna says. “People can buy either gently used or new — whatever suits them.”
Building a resale system that feels effortless
One of the biggest reasons people avoid resale is the effort involved. Listing products, coordinating deliveries, negotiating prices, and handling logistics can quickly become exhausting.
Second Hugs attempts to simplify that process through tech-enabled systems.
The platform currently operates through its website and WhatsApp-based buyer and seller assistance tools.
Sellers can list products online and schedule doorstep pickups, while buyers receive recommendations based on their requirements, budget, and location.
“We have used tech aggressively,” Swarna says. “We have buyer bots, seller bots, integrated logistics, payment gateway, geolocation filtering, transit insurance.”
The company also built features that help users discover products available closer to them to reduce shipping costs.
The early months, she recalls, were spent testing demand and refining the website.
“We got very good traction in the first six months,” she says. “So much so that our website was struggling to handle it.”
That led the team to rebuild the platform into a more robust, coded website with improved UI and backend support.
Though still in its early growth stage, the platform has already seen growing engagement and increasing listings. Swarna shares that the company plans to launch an app in the coming months.
Every reused toy, book, or stroller proves that good parenting isn’t measured by how much we buy.
Currently, Second Hugs has an approximate 15–20K user database, spanning both buyers and sellers.
The website draws over 1 lakh monthly visitors, and the brand has cultivated an active Instagram community of around 35–40K followers. These metrics underscore the growing demand and engagement with a resale ecosystem designed to be convenient, tech-driven, and community-focused.
“Why let things collect dust at home?”
For 40-year-old Kolkata-based seller Swati Khem, the platform solved a problem she had quietly lived with for years.
“As a parent and a seller, I see how quickly kids outgrow things,” she says. “And how much value remains in them.”
Before discovering Second Hugs, most unused products simply stayed at home.
“Honestly, most things just stayed unused or got passed on randomly,” she says. “There was no structured way to reuse them.”
Swati began listing both her children’s, aged 9 and 11 respectively, outgrown toys and slow-moving stock from her toy business.
The process felt surprisingly simple to her.
“They get it picked up from my end. Everything else is hassle-free. It’s a very smooth process and the payments are very quick.”
Some toys sold immediately, while others took time depending on demand. But what stayed with her was the realisation that parents were genuinely open to buying pre-loved products.
“I was shocked in the beginning,” she admits. “People really are looking for pre-loved toys.”
Over time, the experience also changed the way she shops for her own children.
“I started shopping more consciously because I know they have a second life,” she says. “After my kids are done with it, it can be used by someone else.”
Beyond saving money, each second-hand purchase helps reduce waste and keeps usable products out of landfills.
Her advice to hesitant parents is simple:
“Don’t let your toys sit at home and collect dust. Let it bring smile to other faces around.”
From skepticism to acceptance
For 29-year-old buyer Agnelo Remo Cooke, purchasing a pre-loved baby stroller initially felt unfamiliar.
“To be very honest, it was a bit off-putting for me,” he says. “I’m going to buy second-hand products for my cousin’s newborn.”
But conversations with the team gradually changed his perspective.
“They explained the entire thing to me,” he recalls. “The people talking to me gave me an entire brief of it to the point where I had to tell them that I am convinced enough to buy.”
He eventually purchased a stroller for his cousin’s newborn and says the guided experience stood out most.
“There was somebody throughout,” he says. “I felt like I was being guided constantly.”
From product recommendations to delivery tracking and post-purchase follow-ups, he describes the process as seamless.
But beyond convenience, the experience also changed how he thought about sustainability.
“Understanding the importance of it and being a conscious citizen by contributing to reduce carbon footprint is very important for us,” he says.
Today, he recommends the platform to family members whenever they need children’s products.
“There will always be taboos about pre-loved products,” he says. “But getting past them is something people should focus on.”
A quieter shift in parenting
The idea of ‘good parenting’ has often been linked to buying everything brand new. But platforms like Second Hugs are slowly challenging that mindset.
Not by asking parents to compromise, but by asking a different question: if something is safe, functional, and still useful, does it really need to be discarded?
Sometimes sustainability begins not with sacrifice, but with giving a child’s outgrown belongings another chance to be loved.
For Swarna, the answer lies in making sustainability practical rather than idealistic.
“More and more parents benefit out of it,” she says, “by leading to less waste, less landfills, less carbon footprint.”
In many homes, there are already shelves full of products waiting for a second chance at being useful.
And perhaps that’s where circular parenting begins — not with grand environmental gestures, but with one toy, one stroller, or a pair of tiny shoes finding another child to belong to.
All images courtesy Swarna Daga Mimani
