Do you remember wearing shoes in childhood that were either too tight or too loose? It is said that wearing the wrong size of shoe puts children at risk of foot deformities.
“Children do not wear the right shoes for the first 10 years of their lives. We are making them wear bigger sizes and this is a universal problem,” says Satyajit Mittal, founder of footwear startup Aretto.
“Between zero and three years of age, children’s feet size changes every three months. We figured out the problem that while feet grow, their shoes do not,” he adds.
In 2020, he started researching the anatomy of children’s feet by speaking to several podiatrists. And after two years of research, he came up with a one-of-its-kind shoe that expands as the child grows.
“We started working on a shoe that flexes as per the feet. The feet grow either from the front or back or sideways, and when a child wears this shoe, it expands accordingly and takes the shape and contour of their feet,” he says.
Satyajit started marketing the shoe with its patented innovation 3D knit along with his childhood friend and co-founder, Krutika Lal.
The 3D knit is a stretchable and highly durable fabric to fashion shoe uppers. These shoes are 360-degree flexible, breathable, adaptive in size, and stretch up to three sizes.
It not only saves parents from buying shoes multiple times but also provides comfortable shoes to children — a neglected segment in the footwear industry.
The shoes are priced between Rs 1,800 and Rs 2,600. Last month, he clocked a revenue of Rs 21 lakh.
So far, Satyajit has sold over 6,000 pairs of shoes. Most of his customers are from Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, as well as the US and the UK.