I managed to make it work finally 
The error was that the serialization was being executed before the scene was actually ready to be serialized. The solution was to place it inside a executeWhenReady block
onSceneLoaded(sceneFile: File, babylonScene: BABYLON.Scene)
{
/*WRONG*/
const serializedScene = BABYLON.SceneSerializer.Serialize(babylonScene);
/*CORRECT*/
babylonScene.executeWhenReady(() =>
{
const serializedScene = BABYLON.SceneSerializer.Serialize(babylonScene);
const jsonObj = JSON.stringify(serializedScene);
// broadcast object via socket.io here
});
.
.
.
}
Thank you again for your help @aWeirdo and @Evgeni_Popov