When Bandra-based sisters Sana and Alfiya Khan emptied the flab in their closet in March 2019 to host their own garage sale, little did they know that this would be the spark that would fuel a full-blown business a year later. While they were aware of thrifting and the culture around thrift shops, at the time, there was very little known about it in Mumbai. 

A year later, in the middle of the pandemic, they experienced a different kind of demand as most people were indoors and stopped buying from fashion stores and high street brands to rely on second-hand clothes. “Initially, during the pandemic, it was mostly college students who didn’t have huge disposable incomes who bought from us; but slowly, it turned out that people who were aware about their choices and the impact they had on the environment also started buying from us,” says Sana Khan, co-founder, Bombay Closet Cleanse.