When was IVF introduced in India | IVF in India History

The technology was first used successfully by Dr Subhas Mukerjee in Kolkata. On that day, India’s first IVF baby, a girl named Durga, also known as Kanupriya Agarwal, was born. Dr Mukerjee used equipment to try out new techniques. He was the person to use human menopausal gonadotrophin for ovarian stimulation. He was also the person to have a successful birth from a frozen-thawed embryo.

However Dr. Mukerjee did not write about his work in journals. So the government and other doctors did not believe him at that time. This meant that the technology was not used widely in medicine.

The Official August 6 1986

Dr. Mukerjee’s work in 1978 was not recognised. So IVF was introduced to doctors eight years later. On August 6 1986, a baby girl named Harsha was born at KEM Hospital in Mumbai. This was a project that many doctors worked on together. The Indian Council of Medical Research led by Dr T.C. Anand Kumar and Dr Indira Hinduja, supported this project. 

The birth of Harsha in 1986 is seen as the time when IVF became a part of India’s healthcare system. This led to an increase in the use of assisted reproductive technologies across the country.

In 2002, the Indian Council of Medical Research officially said that Dr. Mukerjee’s work in 1978 was the time IVF was used in India. This changed the history of medicine to say that Dr Subhas Mukerjee was the first person to introduce IVF to the country.

How common is IVF in India 2026

India does a lot of IVF cycles every year around 2,00,000 to 2,50,000. This makes India one of the markets for fertility treatments in the world.The doctors and medical community want to increase this number to more than 500,000 IVF cycles per year by 2030. This is because many people need IVF treatments.

The IVF services market in India is worth over $1.3 billion. More and more people in cities are looking for IVF treatments. Also many tourists come to India for treatments. Because of these reasons the IVF market in India is growing fast.

It is growing at a rate of 11% to 16% every year. India IVF cycles are increasing. IVF services are also growing in India.

Age Group	Realistic Success Rate (Per Cycle)
Under 30 years	55% to  65%
30 to  34 years	50% to  60%
35 to  37 years	40% to  50%
38 to  40 years	30% to  40%
Above 40 years	10% to  20%
DonorEgg Cycles	60% to  70% (regardless of the recipient’s age)

 

Before actually knowing what IVF is, we have to know how it all started. In the United Kingdom, on 25 July 1978, Louise Brown was born through IVF. Just months later, the tree of IVF in india history started taking its roots. On October 3, 1978, just 67 days later, India’s first IVF baby was born, Kanupriya Agarwal. 

She was born in Kolkata to Dr Subhas Mukherjee. His thesis contribution is considered groundbreaking work in  India’s medical science. Even though he receives very little credit and recognition for his contribution.   

A significant shift in the fertility treatment landscape in India was brought about by his successful IVF treatment of a couple who had been infertile for years. After this incident, many fertility treatment clinics were opened in the 1990s. Later on, many advanced reproductive technologies came. It became very famous then. 

The success rates of fertility treatments were further increased as IVF technology advanced over time, introducing innovative methods like egg freezing, genetic testing, and ICSI (Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection). Medical tourism has also increased in India, as patients seeking high-quality and reasonably priced IVF treatments travel there from the US, UK, and the Middle East.

What happens in IVF procedure In India | IVF In india history

Unlike natural fertilisation, IVF fertilisation takes place in a glass dish. Semen from a man and an egg from a woman meet in this glass dish, and successfully merge and form an embryo.

Then this embryo is implanted into an incubator, which mimics the temperature of the human female body, so that the embryo can grow fully outside the body. When it is developed enough for transportation towards the actual mother. 

The whole process of IVF is called a “cycle” as it goes through several phases and stages. There are main stages: ovarian stimulation, egg retrieval, sperm retrieval and preparation, fertilisation, embryo development/culture, and embryo transfer. IVF charges in India, or anywhere in the world, are based on these stages. 

Clinics or IVF centres typically make their packages cost-based on how much each stage will cost. Before actually reading about the IVF charges in India, let’s get a small briefing about what happens in each stage. Ovarian stimulation (Ovaries of the women are stimulated or encouraged so that they produce more than one egg), Egg retrieval (Then those , Fertilisation, Embryo development and culture and Embryo transfer

The best thing about all this was that he did all this without any actual laboratory equipment. Mukherjee did some amazing work in the field of in vitro fertilisation. His work was very advanced for that time, considering India’s society was not all that advanced and modern. This is especially true when you consider that he was using basic laboratory equipment. He came up with techniques that people all around the world use today.

For example Dr. Mukherjee used a medicine called human menopausal gonadotrophin to help women’s ovaries produce more eggs. He also used a method to get the eggs from the women, which involved going through the vagina.

One of the important things Dr Mukherjee did was freeze embryos. This meant that he could save them for use. Because of this, a baby named Durga was born. Durga was the first baby in the world to be born from an embryo that had been frozen and then thawed. Dr. Mukherjee’s work on embryo freezing was a deal. People, like Bhattacharya and Bhattacharya and also Cherukuri and his team, wrote about Dr. Mukherjee’s work and the baby Durga.

ment; he actually used his own refrigerator as a means to freeze the embryo. 

Go IVF surrogacy clinic is the top choice for any couple seeking IVF treatment. It is headquartered in Delhi, India. But do not let its location change your choice, because it has many connections and treats patients from abroad. It has been in the Field of assisted reproductive technology for more than a decade. More than 8000 successful pregnancy cases.

The IVF charges in India include one IVF cycle with partners eggs and sperm. It provides pregnancy results if the couple’s gametes and reproductive health are average. They have fewer chances of poor health and fertility status. Their IVF treatment can face multiple failures that affect the IVF charges in India. Your expert can suggest advanced IVF treatment or various approaches in the process for successful outcomes. 

Many procedures are available to assist with different infertility conditions in IVF to help couples become parents. Our highly experienced and certified experts will suggest the best process according to your requirements and a budget-friendly approach. 

Go IVF Surrogacy: At the most affordable prices

The IVF procedure cost in India at the Go IVF surrogacy comes under the price bracket of INR 3,14,862.57 to INR 3,81,651.60. Your price may go up if the couple decides to undergo advanced fertility treatment due to their severe infertility issue. The fertility expert will harvest your eggs in the fresh cycle. They will monitor the period of ovulation-inducing medications. After that, they mix your eggs with fresh sperm.

The mentioned price range for IVF treatment in India includes the Initial consultation with the fertility expert, complete IVF/ ICSI cycle procedure, Blood tests, ultrasound scans, male and female blood investigations, Egg pick-up and embryo transfer, and the fees of your fertility expert/embryologist. 

Self-Egg IVF charges	INR 287101.40 to INR 315811.54
IVF charges  with a surrogate mother	INR 2105410.23 to INR 2871013.96
IVF charges with egg donor	INR 478502.33 to INR 507212.47

Key reasons to choose GO IVF SURROGACY

• They offer very elevated assistance and procedures for all treatments
• They have the most Highest IVF success rates in Delhi

The highest success rates of pregnancy

SELF EGGS IVF

60%

DONOR EGGS IVF

75%

SELF-EGG SURROGACY

85%

DONOR EGGS SURROGACY

98%

• Their  most skilled fertility and IVF specialist in Delhi
• Many packages and other facilities for affordable IVF cost in Delhi
• The best consultation and counselling sessions

Contact Go IVF Surrogacy Clinic: Info@IVFSurrogacy.in / 91-989-929-3903

First IVF centre in India

If we consider how IVF first started in India, Dr Subhash Mukharjee’ s lab should be considered the first IVF centre in India. It was first India’s first unofficial IVF centre was established at Kolkata, SSKM Hospital in 1978. 

Eight years later, a second hospital associated with SSKM was established with the name of KEM Hospital. It was the first hospital which was officially recognised by the government of India. 

IVF history timeline in India

Early Challenges and Disputed History

The history of IVF in India has been pretty tough because doctors were trying to get people to trust them and recognise their work. A lot of the disagreements happened in the media through the usual ways of reviewing things.    

People in India really wanted to have kids. There was a lot of pressure on them to do so. This made a lot of people want to use IVF services. As a result, the market for things like IVF grew fast. Eventually, people from other countries started coming to India to get help having babies, and this market was worth over $450 million every year. 

While all of this was happening, India was not doing a good job of regulating the IVF industry. Even though the ICMR made a lot of rules for the thousands of clinics that were opening up, these rules were not officially approved by the Indian Parliament for a long time. 

This meant that private companies were able to grow fast without being closely watched. India and the IVF industry in India were able to grow without rules to follow.

Market growth rate and expansion of IVF

After IVF started in India, it grew fast. India’s IVF sector faced a lot of challenges. Once it got going, it helped many couples and became more advanced and available all over India.

Market Volume

In 2026, the Indian IVF market was worth about USD 1.06 billion. It is expected to grow at a rate of 7.8% from 2027 to 2030. Some other estimates say that the market will be worth USD 1,410.11 million by 2028 and will grow at a rate of 16.23% every year, eventually reaching USD 4,915.01 million by 2034.

Factors that help IVF become more popular

The number of people with infertility issues is increasing rapidly in India. As development happens, many people want to give other parts of their lives more importance; in that case, sometimes having a child takes a backseat. This later prompts them to decide to have a child later on. Especially women who are more focused on their career, for them, actually focusing on the pregnancy is a different route. 

But of course, many other things also encourage people to have their own child or start a family. Due to the sedentary lifestyle, many fertility issues are stemming in society. 

New technologies like taking pictures of embryos, doing screening tests and freezing embryos are making IVF more successful and easier to get. India has become a place for people to go for fertility treatment because it is affordable and has good medical facilities and rules. Not only for Indians but for patients outside as well. 

Support from the Government For IVF | Did IVF get support from the government in the past?

The paper by Aditya Bharadwaj shows that the government and its expert committee did not accept Dr Subhas Mukerjee’s breakthrough in 1978. There were reasons for this. The government and its expert committee did not think Dr Subhas Mukerjee’s work was good enough because he did not write about it in journals, peer review and magazines first.

 Dr Subhas Mukerjee told the public and media about his breakthrough before he wrote about it in these committees  This is why the medical establishment did not believe him. During those times these reviews were  of  more importance in the medical field. 

Later, the Government of West Bengal made a committee to look into Dr Subhas Mukerjee’s work. This committee did not have the right people on it. Dr T.C. Anand Kumar said that the people on the committee did not know about reproductive technologies. 

The committee had a professor of radiophysics, a gynaecologist, a physiologist and a neurophysiologist.. None of them knew about the field Dr Subhas Mukerjee was working in. So they did not understand his report further. They rejected it completely.

Dr Subhas Mukerjee’s work was also not accepted because of the way people think about science. Many people think that big scientific discoveries happen in countries first. There was a lot of stigma attached to reproduction and family values in those times in India.  They do not think that someone in a place like Calcutta can discover everyone else.

This made it hard for Dr Subhas Mukerjee to get people to believe him. The Indian authorities did not think Dr Subhas Mukerjee could be ahead of everyone. So they did not take him seriously. They thought he was just doing something on his own rather than being a pioneer in his field, Dr Subhas Mukerjee.

The Legend of IVF in India history

Since 1991, India has been trying to make its economy more open, which has helped people use technology to treat infertility. The Indian Council of Medical Research thinks that the market for assisted reproduction could be worth $6 billion, according to PubMed Central. 

With all the progress that has been made, many people still have trouble getting pregnant, and there are cultural concerns about having children, which is why more and more people are looking for help with infertility. IVF in India is getting more popular because of this. The Indian IVF market is growing because of these factors. IVF, in India, is helping people.

The development of IVF in India, from Dr Mukhopadhyay’s primary work with basic tools in 1978 to the latest advanced fertility clinics across the country, explains both scientific achievement and the necessity of recognising innovative milestones, even if such acknowledgement is delayed.

The government of India has launched drives like awareness campaigns and financial support programmes. For instance, in August 2023, the government of Goa allowed a free IVF service at Goa Medical College and Hospital.

Statistics of Infertility

The WHO estimates that infertility affects about 1 in 6 people worldwide, or 17.5%. It is believed that the infertility rate in India falls between 3.9% and 16.8%, while AIIMS reports that 10–15% of Indian couples encounter fertility issues.

Who is the father of IVF in India? History of IVF in india 

Dr Subhash Mukherjee is known as the father of the IVF in India. 

Current Scenario Of IVF In India in the world diaspora

India is the Top choice for IVF in the world. Why? See the list below. 

• Low-cost medication alternatives compared to Western countries 
• Subsidies for low-cost items and payment methods
• Globally, IVF capital will increase in the coming years, with reasonable IVF costs in India.
• Availability of advanced technology at a low price compared to other countries.
• There are numerous top-tier centres and hospitals.
• Use of cutting-edge strategies to treat infertility
• Skilled IVF specialists with high experience and expertise 
• Higher success rates of a healthy pregnancy in a variety of partner conditions
• The donor eggs or sperm are readily available at a reasonable price
• Decreases miscarriage chances as infertility conditions can be diagnosed
• The legal field of IVF is regulated and supervised by the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021 and Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021. Anyone, be it a single woman wanting to adopt or a childless couple opting for IVF.  Let’s go through them one by one. 

What are the laws for single women wanting IVF treatment in India?

There are a few countries in the world which have made IVF for single women accessible, and yes,  India is one of them. However, there are certain things which should be kept in mind.  First, the age limit for single women for IVF treatment is from 21 to 50 years old. She can opt for insemination using a legal sperm donor. 

One of the restrictions is that single women cannot opt for surrogacy in India. This framework is specifically protected under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021, meaning only widows or divorcees aged between 35 and 45 years are eligible for surrogacy. A child born from IVF to a single woman would be recognised as her legitimate child legally. Sperm donors would not have any parental rights or responsibilities towards the child.

What are the laws for married couples wanting IVF treatment in India?

Single women can choose IVF treatment; however, single men can only opt for sperm donation under the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021.  As for IVF, single men cannot access it. It is not legal under the current laws.

What are the laws for married couples wanting IVF treatment in India?

If a heterosexual couple is choosing IVF, then the woman must be between 21 and 50, and the man should be between 21 and 55 years old. Both involved parties also sign the legally written informed consent, as it is mandatory.

Couples who are married for more than five years and do not have children due to any medical reasons can choose Altruistic surrogacy only, not commercial surrogacy, as it is not legal.

Altruistic surrogacy: Legally adopted agreement where women decide to carry a child for childless couples out of compassion. Unlike commercial surrogacy, women in this system do not receive any financial payment or profit. A big motivation for a surrogate mother is derived solely from compassion, kindness, and friendship. All the monetary expenses are taken care of by the parents themselves. Any known person or stranger can do this, such as a sister, friends, a cousin or close friends.

What are the laws for transgender couples wanting IVF treatment In India?

The ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) Act of 2021 specifically defines a treatment-seeking couple as a legally married man and woman. Legally, if two transgender individuals are married as the “husband and wife” under the law, then they can access all the rights reserved for normal heterosexual childless couples. However, for same sex couples, whether married or not is played differently.  As indian constitution still does not recognise same-sex marriage under the Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act, 2021, nor the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021. However, rules for surrogacy for same sex couples are still under construction as many individuals are challenging the high courts under Article 21 (Right to Life and Liberty), which gives the right to reproductive choice. 

What are the laws for Transgender Individuals wanting IVF treatment In India?

The ART (Assisted Reproductive Technology) Act of 2021 specifically defines a treatment-seeking single as a legal woman. So if any transgender person is identified as a woman in legal documents, they can use every single right reserved for single women.

What are the legal things older people should consider for IVF treatment?

In India, the ACT (regulation) Act, 2021, places a very strict rule for the age limit of the couple and the individual to receive the IVF treatment. Violating those rules comes with severe penalties. So, if you want to continue, you must follow all legal procedures. Consent of all involved parties should be taken, thoroughly checking the age limit. Additionally, the clinic where you are taking treatment should also follow guidelines as well.  

What Are The Legal Penalties For Offenders?

For registered clinics, they could face a severe penalty of a monetary fine between rupees five lakh and rupees ten lakhs. Upon consistent violation of rules, imprisonment of up to eight years with an additional monetary fine of twenty lakhs.

Can old-age couples or couples not have a child through IVF in India?

Rare exception

However, there are still exceptions made by the government. You can seek legal permission through the submission of certain documents. Below is the list of typical required documents. 

WARNING: Please note that the list of documents is based on a recent Kerala court judgement, so there may be a distinction to the required documents. 

Proof of baby carrying capacity: It involves two tests, such as Cardiovascular Clearance  and General Health Clearance: 

All the infertility diagnostic reports and evidence: it involves Ultrasound/Hysteroscopy, Cryopreservation Records and Hormonal Profile (AMH, FSH, Estradiol).

Specialist Board Evaluation: The government performs its own tests and examinations. 

Guardianship documents for the baby under the ART Act: Insurance Cover, Guardianship Plan and Proof of past infertility treatment. 

What actually is IVF in India history

Before actually learning about IVF in India’s history, we have to know what IVF is. So, in vitro fertilisation, also known popularly as IVF among the general public, is an expert-assisted reproductive technique. Meaning in IVF, doctors assist couples or individuals who are dreaming of a child. In natural procreation, after intercourse, on its own, fertilisation occurs, then the embryo forms, further developing into the baby.

However, in some couples or individuals, this natural procreation is impossible or difficult; there could be many reasons for it, which is why couples choose IVF. IVF is just one of the ways to start a family among the surrogacy methods, adoption, and many others. Even though IVF in India’s history started pretty late compared to other nations, it has become a global hub for  IVF. It does not matter that IVF in India’s history started late. 

Unlike natural procreation, fertilisation occurs outside the female body. Fertilisation is the process in which a man’s sperm and a female’s eggs merge and form an embryo after intercourse. However, as many couples could be having many fertility issues, such as the fallopian tubes being blocked in the women’s reproductive system. Other reasons could be a problem with men’s semen. 

There are many reasons for choosing IVF as your optimal path towards becoming a parent. For instance, many couples in IVF in India history have chosen the IVF path, such as many celebrity couples like Shah Rukh & Gauri Khan, Aamir Khan & Kiran Rao, and Shilpa Shetty & Raj Kundra. Throughout the history of IVF in India, not only couples who have a difficult time getting pregnant are choosing IVF, but also individuals who wish to be pregnant or be a parent without any restraints towards marriage. India’s current law and new updates allow one to be a parent without any pressure of getting married first. 

So, we were talking about the IVF process. In the IVF process, complete fertilisation occurs in the laboratory. Then, if the embryo is healthy, doctors transfer that newly formed embryo into the intended mother. Of course, this process becomes more complicated as you move forward, but compared to other processes, this is the easiest path towards parenthood.