About Us
Where it began
Saha started with a simple, stubborn question: do we meet the our children where they are when we buy 'things' for them? In other words, do we really understand their requirements?
Debaleena, an engineer by training and a mother-turned-entrepreneur by calling, had spent years reading books, attending courses to understand developmental requirements of a growing young child.
Her quest to understand children made her found Saha - a brand designed keeping in mind what a child truly needs and not what we adults think they need.
Saha was launched in September 2024. The name itself carries the intention: togetherness, support, the quiet strength of things done well and done gently.
What we make, and why
Saha makes open-ended toys and movement-friendly clothing for children aged 0 to 7, rooted in Waldorf pedagogy. Everything we design starts from a question we ask before any other: what does this child's stage of development actually need right now?
That question shapes everything that follows. A toy that does one thing can only ever mean one thing. A toy that does nothing in particular, a silk, a wooden peg doll, an unshaped block, can mean anything a child needs it to mean that day. It builds imagination instead of substituting for it. Our clothing follows the same logic. Children move constantly and unselfconsciously when they're small, so their clothes should move with them, not against them, made from natural fibres that breathe, stretch, and hold up to a genuinely full day of climbing, crawling, and falling over.
We are not a gifting brand. We're not chasing the aesthetic of childhood for the benefit of the adults photographing it. We're building things meant to be used, worn out, handed down, and used again, because that is what respect for a child's development actually looks like in practice.
Two founders, one conviction
Debaleena is Saha's founder and the person most families meet first, on camera, in workshops, in the community conversations we host. Her training as a Waldorf educator sits behind every product decision we make.
Nikhil, Saha's co-founder, has background is in mechanical engineering and sales and channel development, which sounds like an unlikely pairing with early childhood pedagogy until you realise that both disciplines are, at their core, about building things that actually work for the people using them and finding the right way to get them there. I bring the operational and structural side of the business; Debaleena brings the pedagogical and creative vision. Neither half works without the other.
Rooted in Indian craftsmanship
Every Saha product is made with Indian hands and Indian materials. We work with natural fibres and traditional craft techniques because they are, quite simply, right for children, gentle against skin, honest in how they age, free of the synthetic shortcuts that too much of children's manufacturing has normalised. Supporting Indian artisans and supply chains isn't a marketing line for us. It's the only way we know how to build a brand this way.
