Why Rudi Baby exists

Rudi is Swahili for "return" — and that's the whole idea. Babies outgrow their gear astonishingly fast. A cot lasts eighteen months, a bouncer maybe six, an infant car seat barely a year. Yet each one costs real money and then sits in a store room.

We started Rudi Baby because Nairobi parents kept solving the same problem privately: borrowing a cot from a cousin, buying a stroller second-hand on a group chat, scrambling for a car seat the week visitors arrive with a baby. It works, but it's slow and the quality is a lottery.

So we built a small, carefully chosen catalogue of gear that we own, maintain and clean ourselves. You rent it for as long as your child needs it, we deliver and collect, and the item goes on to the next family instead of into storage.

Everything we stock is something we would put our own child in. Car seats are retired after any accident, fabric parts are laundered between rentals, and anything that stops meeting our standard leaves the catalogue for good.