Now, corporatisation of test-tube baby-making in India!

Louis Joy Brown, the first test-tube baby born globally in July 1978 is now a doctor in the UK. Dr Subhash Mukhopathyaya, creator of India’s first-test baby, Durga alias Kanupriya Agrawal in Kolkata (in October 1978) was ‘recognized’ only in 2006. His tragic suicide after social ostracisation and governmental negligence even inspired a much-acclaimed Bollywood movie, Ek Doctor ki Maut (Death of a Doctor) by the veteran Tapan Sinha. Now, after many a test-tube baby birth here and there, the in-vitro fertilization (IVF) technique is going the corporate way in the country: to organise the booming business, an Indian-American entrepreneur, Mr Suresh Soni, plans to invest around Rs 700 crore on test-tube baby-making, beginning at 25 centres across 10 cities in India and the Middle East in the first phase by 2013.

Mr Soni, Chairman of the Bangalore-based Nova Medical Centers, on Thursday told Business Line here that he has picked up 51% stake in the Ahmedabad-based Pulse Women’s Hospital, a leading IVF and women care hospital service provider, to create a chain of IVF clinics in Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi and Dubai this year. Pulse Hospital has been treating 1,200 women annually through IVF technique with a success rate of 35% to make childless couples proud parents at affordable cost. The IVF clinic chain would be collectively owned by doctors.

Nova Medical Center, the flagship company set up two years ago, would now set up now the Nova Pulse IVF Clinics chain, for setting up facilities across 20 other places in the next two years, with the aim to handle one lakh cases annually by 2013. In the tie-up, Dr Pravin Patel and Dr Manish Banker, owners of Pulse Hospital, will also hold a 5% stake in each of the IVF clinics to be set up under the Nova Pulse brand, he said.

As against a 100-bed hospital costing Rs 200 crore, an IVF clinic would be set up with an investment of nearly Rs 10-12 crore – and compared to a minimum seven years of break-even for a hospital, a clinic would turnaround only in six to eight months, he said, adding the patient would also get the IVF clinic facility cheaper by 25%. Currently, it ranges between Rs 75,000 and Rs 1.25 lakh per case.

Mr Soni, who is also Managing Director of the US-bsed GTI Capital Group LLC, said due to lack of adequate facilities in the unorganized healthcare sector, only 65,000 “cycles” are reported in India annually, although the potential is 15 lakh per annum in the country where an estimated two crore men and women are reported to be turning infertile each year due to lifestyle diseases.

Dr Banker said as against Israel’s 3,263 women undergoing the IVF technique each year, only nine Indian women adopt this technique to conceive a baby.

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