One of my core childhood memories is swimming in clothes, school uniforms, and shoes that were two—sometimes three—sizes too big. My mum’s logic was simple: buy ridiculously huge, pray I wouldn’t outgrow the item by the next month, and let it swallow me whole until I finally caught up. You could roll up oversized sleeves, sure. But shoes? You can’t exactly cuff a sneaker.
That exact parenting nightmare is what the Pune-based footwear brand Aretto set out to solve with just a single shoe design on their website.
“Most kids were not wearing properly fitted shoes at any given point,” says founder Satyajit Mittal over the phone. “They were either wearing loose or painfully tight shoes. Sizing is the biggest challenge because kids’ feet grow every day and shoes don’t.”
After researching the problem for a while, Mittal realised that while shoes are locked into rigid numbers, socks are far more forgiving—coming in broad categories like S, M, L or XL—with one pair stretching to fit multiple sizes. That’s when an idea clicked: what if he took a stretchable, sock-like build and slapped a sole underneath that opened up like a blooming flower? Two years and over 200 prototype iterations later, Aretto’s Leaps design was born.
The tech is shockingly clever. The sole features a patented expansion technology called Supergrooves—inverted Y-shaped grooves on the toebox that open in all directions as the feet expand—up to 18 mm, or approximately three full sizes. Combine that with an ultra-stretchy 3D-knitted upper that wraps around the feet without pinching, and a cushioned insole built for playground sprints, and you’ve got a pair of kicks that adapts as fast as childhood itself.
Parents are genuinely obsessed, but more so, they are relieved. “The shoes are very comfortable, not only for the wearer, but even for us parents, who have to make them wear shoes,” says Pallavi Kale, a freelance French teacher who fell for an Instagram ad a year ago and bought a pair for her two-year-old son. “We got the plain black ones, and he wears them everywhere, from family hikes to birthday parties. They’re his favourite shoes.”
Artist Nirupa Rao tells me that she initially tried the Adidas and Nike sneakers gifted to her 14-month-old son, but they were incredibly difficult to put on and take off. Kids don’t move the same way as adults, so mini-me shoes might not be the ideal footwear for your child’s feet. Cute, yes, no doubt, but no parent wants a full-blown tantrum just to squeeze their kid’s feet into some cool kicks. “They were basically adult shoes that were scaled down to child size. So, my son would get really irritable. In comparison, the Aretto shoes just slip on and off like a glove—or like a sock,” says Rao.
Even celebrity moms like Bipasha Basu, Richa Chadha, and creator-entrepreneur Masoom Minawala’s kids have been spotted in the brand’s shoes. The appeal is simple: a shoe that slips on as easily as a glove and stops you from buying a new pair every six months while somehow managing to look weirdly cool.
Beyond their online hype, Aretto has expanded into 46 retail outlets across India, alongside a physical presence at spaces like Broadway in Hyderabad and Pune and Hamleys. As for what’s next? The brand is preparing to step into the UAE market as well as looking to create shoes for older kids above the age of eight.
