Up to 15% women infertile; IVF takes ground as specialty business

Infertility is becoming an issue as about 12-15% of all married young women in India, about 3 crore, fail to conceive. This is opening up a big business opportunity for in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) specialists, now evolving as an organised business. IVF is a complex series of procedures to help with fertility or prevent genetic problems and assist with the conception of a child.

The key reasons for infertility are couples delaying pregnancy after marriage due to work and living pressures, late for treatments, female tubular blocks, pollution, food habits and living conditions, low sperm count of males as the main reasons. Egg quality of women going down after 30-35 years of age is another major reason, says Dr. Kshitiz Murdia, chief executive officer of Indira IVF - India's largest IVF chain with 110 centres.

As per the National Family Health Study (NFHS), Total Fertility Rate (TFR) or the average number of children that would be born to a woman over her lifetime, has gone down from 2.7 in 2005-06 to an all-time low of 2.1 in 2019-21.

Only 1% of couples seek treatment, as a cycle of 2-6 months costs about ₹1.7 lakh to ₹2 lakh. "We get about 80,000 enquiries every month, but only 9,000 walk in for treatment and of them only about 5,000 get investigated. The success rate is about 73%-74% and is improving year after year," says Dr. Murdia. He says about 2-2.5 lakh cycles of treatments are done between 1,200-1,700 IVF clinics in India, mostly standalone. Couples also come for treatment from countries like Bangladesh and other SAARC countries, due to the high success rate and low cost of treatment in India. Like Indira IVF, Bengaluru-based Nova IVF is another chain with over 50 centres and there are many small regional chains as well.