I remember one time when I was 23 and I was hanging out with my friends. One of the guys turned to me and casually said, “Hey, don’t get too late, try to find someone to marry as soon as possible.”

I was stunned.

Here I was, fresh out of college, still figuring out my first job and what I wanted to do with my life. Someone was telling me that my time was already running out!

Now, this is a pressure that many Indian women face. Even though so many of us are getting married later, or not at all. Sometimes to focus on our careers, and sometimes because we just haven’t found the right person.

Still, the biological clock is real. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, fertility declines with age. A healthy 30-year-old has a 20% chance of conceiving each cycle. By 40, it falls to 5%.

And now, this modern tension has a modern option. Egg freezing.

In India, this is still a relatively niche space, but it’s growing fast. Google searches for ‘egg-freezing’ grew 150% in 2025, with most of the searches coming from urban cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

So, what does egg freezing offer women?

To hear from women who got the procedure done and from doctors on its costs, benefits and limitations, check out the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at feedback@thecore.in.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kudrat (Host): I’ve always known about the concept of the “biological clock.”

But the first time I really felt what it meant was when I was 23. We were just hanging out — four friends, cold beers in hand, laughing about nothing serious. And out of nowhere, one of the guys turns to me and says, completely casually, “Zyaada late mat karna yaar. Dhoondh lo koi. Main matchmaker bhi connect kar sakta hoon.”

I was stunned. Here I was, fresh out of college, still figuring out my first job, my life, my dreams… and someone was already telling me time was running out.

Kudrat (Host): That conversation at 23 stayed with me. It planted an anxiety that grew over the years—through career moves, relationship ups and downs, and the constant “when will you settle down?” questions that Indian families still love to ask.

This is a familiar script for several women in India. So many of us are choosing to marry later, compared to our predecessors, or even not at all. Sometimes, to focus on careers, sometimes simply because we haven’t found the right partner.

Still, the biological clock is real. Fertility declines with age. The American Society for Reproductive Medicine estimates that a healthy 30-year-old woman has about a 20% chance of conceiving. By 40, that falls to less than 5%.

Kudrat (Host): And now, this modern tension has a modern option: egg freezing.

In India, high costs and low awareness have kept this a relatively niche space compared to the West, but the procedure is expanding rapidly.

According to market research firm Grand View Research, the egg freezing and embryo banking market in India was valued at USD 206 million in 2023 and is projected to reach over USD 632 million by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 17.4%.

Google Trends data shows searches for “egg freezing” in India surged over 150% in 2025, with the highest traction in metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru.

Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Brief. We don’t do hot takes. Instead we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.

In today’s episode, I explore the rising interest in egg freezing among Indian women. We’ll hear directly from doctors and from women who opted for the procedure—why they chose it, what the experience was really like, and how they feel about it now.

For this episode, I spoke with three women. Each represents a different reason.

Aakanksha is a 37-year-old petroleum engineer and entrepreneur who flew from the UK to Mumbai… Valentina, a 30-year-old tech professional who froze embryos shortly after getting married and Nalini, a cancer survivor who turned to egg freezing for medical reasons.

Their paths differ, but all were driven by the desire not to leave motherhood entirely to chance.

Aakanksha: My name’s Aakanksha. I am 37 years old, and I am a petroleum engineer and an entrepreneur.

I knew I always wanted to be a mother, and my basic requirement of trying to find a partner all these years was so that I could start a family, very honestly.

And I think that is what I was—the first thing that I had spoken to my now husband about as well—that, do you want to have kids or not? So I was very clear that I wanted to have children. And I think I knew about this procedure for the last good seven, eight odd years. Plus, I had decided that once I turned 35, I would take it seriously, initially to find a partner.

And then when hope started diminishing for me, I thought that, okay, let me at least get this done.

Kudrat (Host): Aakanksha told me that she’s always been a bit of a maverick in her family. She works in a male-dominated field, and she was single well into her 30s.

Aakanksha: Somebody who’s done something which is totally unacceptable to the quote-unquote Indian society.

My parents were like, accha ab yeh kuch naya le kar aayi hai. So I think with my family and my friends, they were like, okay.

Kudrat (Host): Aakanksha chose Mumbai over the UK mainly for the significantly lower cost here versus in the West.

She wasn’t comfortable sharing the exact numbers, but most clinics charge anywhere from 1.5 - 2.5 lakh rupees for the procedure, in addition to a 15-20k per year storage fee. Not egregious, but certainly not affordable for most Indian women either.

Dr Pai: So, egg-freezing means what? If you take the—so it’s just the procedure. The procedure is similar to IVF. Once the patient is agreeable to egg freezing, then we have to give them injections for 11 days, between nine to 11 days.

Kudrat (Host): That was Dr. Hrishikesh Pai. He founded Bloom IVF, a leading chain in India. He’s one of the early pioneers of egg freezing in the country.

Dr Pai: And once the trigger is given, within 36 hours we admit them, give them a short general anaesthesia, and from inside, by using the vaginal probe with a thin needle going through it—it goes through a guide which is fixed to the probe.

We quickly puncture the vaginal wall and enter the ovary and aspirate all these follicles, small bags of water. Each bag of water may or may not have an egg. So these follicles are aspirated and quickly, within 15–20 minutes, the procedure is over.

Kudrat (Host): Then, Dr Pai said, he freezes those eggs, usually in liquid nitrogen and sends them into storage.

Dr. Pai has seen a clear rise in demand, though he still describes egg-freezing as a niche choice even in his clinics. He primarily focuses on helping infertile couples through IVF.

While Aakanksha froze her eggs at 37 as a single woman worried about declining fertility, Valentina’s story is different.

She was 29 when she froze embryos with her husband–a proactive step while building her tech career.

Doctors often recommend freezing embryos rather than unfertilized eggs when a partner is available. That’s because embryos generally lead to better pregnancy outcomes.

Valentina:   I was not really sure of when I want to have a child, or even if I want to have a child. I am, of course, a very career-oriented person. And a career never comes easily, right? It takes its own time, and I did not want the regret in life later, which I may or may not have, or if I want to have a child. And I wanted an option for me.

The only thing that pushed me was, like I said, I had made up my mind of getting married, and as soon as I got married, I knew that this was something that I wanted to do the very next minute. So that’s what I actually did.

Kudrat (Host): Both Aakanksha and Valentina experienced side effects from the hormones and retrieval, but described them as mostly temporary and manageable.

Valentina: You know, you do feel tired. There is fatigue. In fact, you do—I did experience slightly more hair fall than I do normally, but all of that was really temporary. I did not feel any other side effect. I cannot name a few, or not even one, to be honest, which stayed. My next period was slightly heavy.

I mean, I’ve seen a lot of videos here and there where they say that you get the procedure and go out and about.

That was not me. I actually had to take rest the day the procedure ended, and even the next day. So two days—I was not on bed rest, but I was taking care of myself. So I did have pain. My anaesthesia was from the mask, so I had neck pain. My lower body was paining.

So I did give my body time—two days—to heal. I was at home, I was able to get work from home. So yeah, that’s what I did. Of course, eating really well—you have to take care of yourself, that’s all.

Kudrat (Host): Valentina says that getting the procedure done gave her “peace of mind.”

Valentina: But I also know that just because I have eggs frozen, or my embryos, or my husband’s and my embryos frozen, I am not rushing into any conversations.

Like I have to do it this year, I have to do it next year. I am taking my time as and when the time feels right. So it did give me that peace of mind.

But yes, I am in general proud of what I’ve created of my life, right? And this being a part of it, I do feel, yes, it is something to be proud of. But to be honest, I always knew I would get it done. It was just a matter of this year, next year, or when.

So for me, it was, yes, I got this done.

If I didn’t get it done, probably I would have just been a little more harsh with myself.

Kudrat (Host): This idea of security came up repeatedly. And many women and doctors describe egg-freezing as “insurance”--something they may not necessarily need but feel better about having anyway.

Dr Pai: So presently, the people who want to postpone their family or who want to have an insurance cover for their fertility—and who can pay—they are the segment that is coming slowly. If we open the market, then we can do a lot more work, but I don’t want to push it too much.

Kudrat (from clip): Why not?

Dr Hrishikesh: Because there’s no point in pushing a technique. If there’s a demand for the technique, then it’s better. Because I was a pioneer, I could have pushed the technique a lot.

So what happens is that there are a lot of patients who come to me for this technique. For them, it’s just a mental thing—okay, I’ve done my fertility preservation—but many of them are quite young.

Kudrat (from clip): Yeah.

Dr Hrishikesh: So they then later on, when they get married, they naturally become pregnant.

Not many people come and use the frozen eggs. So it’s more of an insurance cover. But once they do that, they are very settled in their mind. They don’t feel guilty about it.

Kudrat (Host): Like all kinds of insurance, egg freezing offers reassurance and not certainty.

We don’t yet have robust long-term data for India on this, but in the US, a 2025 UCLA study found that only about 5.7% of women who froze eggs electively returned to use them within the next 5-7 years. Many, as Dr Pai said, ended up conceiving naturally instead.

Both Valentina and Aakankasha, who’s now also married, said they’ll first try to conceive naturally, and will go for their frozen eggs if needed.

Nalini’s story is different, though. As a cancer survivor, she didn’t have the luxury of time or choice—egg freezing became medically necessary before her chemo treatment.

Nalini: Because I had ovarian cancer and the doctor said that my uterus and ovaries might have to be removed during the surgery, I had to see if getting my eggs frozen was an option. So I went through this, went through the treatment for about seven to eight days.

I had to get injections regularly, and then when the scans came out, it wasn’t really successful, so I had to drop it.

Kudrat (Host): Nalini’s experience is a reminder that even egg freezing doesn’t always work as planned.

And there are no guarantees even if the doctor was able to successfully retrieve and store your eggs.

Freezing is only one step. Using your eggs later involves thawing them, fertilising them with sperm to create embryos, and then transferring the embryo into the uterus—the same process as IVF.

Dr Pai: And egg-freezing—you have to tell them also that the success of IVF in women less than 35 years of age, in three attempts, is around 75–80%. As the age advances after 35, that cumulative pregnancy rate over three attempts will fall more and more.

So you have to tell the person who freezes eggs—listen, just because you freeze your eggs doesn’t mean that you are going to become a mother. You may not become a mother because the success rate is not 100%.

Kudrat (Host): Dr. Pai’s advice to women is pragmatic and measured.

Dr Pai:  I personally feel that after 28, you must do an anti-Müllerian hormone test and an ultrasound to see what your ovarian reserve is. If your ovarian reserve is decent, then you can just keep monitoring it.

And once you cross 32 years of age, then you have to take a call—do you want to have a child? Then it’s best to get married and have a family. If you don’t want to have it, then after 32, irrespective of your ovarian reserve, you should freeze your eggs.

Because after 35, the egg quality really starts falling. So the pregnancy rates will not be that great after freezing, thawing the eggs, and trying for a pregnancy.

So after 32, definitely you must freeze eggs if you don’t want to have a child in the near future.

And this is how the strategy should be—if at the age of 20 your anti-Müllerian hormone is very low and follicle count is low, then obviously you freeze your eggs or get married and try to have a child.

Kudrat (Host): Listening to Aakanksha, Valentina, and Nalini brought me back to that casual conversation at 23.

As women get older, and approach their 30s, that external pressure begins feeling like an internal tension that so many of us carry — between building the life we want and the biological timeline we’re born with.

Egg freezing isn’t a magic fix or a guarantee.

For some, it offers real peace of mind and a sense of control. For others, especially those facing cancer like Nalini, it can be a medical lifeline that doesn’t always deliver.

And for many who choose it, it remains unused insurance—valuable for the feeling of reassurance alone.

Kudrat (Host): That's all for today. You just heard The Signal Brief. We don't do hot takes. Instead, we bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends. The Core produces The Signal Brief. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts.

To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.

If you have feedback, we'd love to hear from you. Write to us at feedback@thecore.in or you can write to me personally at kudrat@thecore.in.

Thank you for listening.