Can You Pause The Biological Clock?

Dear Reader,

I turn 30 next year.

And of all the things I could worry about—my career, the state of the world—the thing that keeps my parents up at night is this: I’m still single. We’ve had more than a few loud arguments about it.

I understand where they’re coming from. Biology isn’t too flexible. According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, a healthy 30-year-old woman has about a 20% chance of conceiving each cycle. By 40, that drops to just 5%.

But life doesn’t always follow that timeline.

Across cities, more Indian women are delaying marriage and motherhood. Which raises a difficult question: what happens when life and biology fall out of sync?

For some, the answer is egg-freezing.

Grand View Research values India’s egg-freezing and embryo banking market at USD 206 million in 2023 and projects that it will cross USD 632 million by 2030, growing at 17.4% annually. 

Aakanksha, a 37-year-old petroleum engineer based in the UK, had been researching egg-freezing for years. In 2025, she travelled to Mumbai and finally went through with it. She wasn’t comfortable sharing exact numbers but most clinics typically charge between Rs 1.5-2.5 lakh for the procedure, plus an annual storage fee of Rs 15,000-20,000.

Ironically, that same month, she met the man she would go on to marry.

Today, she told me she’s trying to conceive naturally. If that doesn’t work, she’ll consider using her frozen eggs.

And that, doctors say, is often how it plays out.

According to Dr Hrishikesh Pai, founder of Bloom IVF, many women who freeze their eggs end up not needing them.

“A lot of patients come in quite young,” he says. “They freeze their eggs as a backup but later conceive naturally.”

Still, he advises women to start paying attention early: get fertility markers checked by 28, reassess by the early 30s, and consider freezing eggs by the mid-30s if having children is a priority.

But even then, there are no guarantees.

Doctors may not retrieve enough viable eggs. Some may not survive the thawing process. And even after fertilisation, implantation may fail. 

So, egg-freezing functions less as a foolproof strategy and more as insurance. It gives women the feeling of security, and a reprieve from the tension so many of us feel about delaying marriage and motherhood. 

To hear more from doctors and women who’ve undergone the procedure, tune in to the latest episode of The Signal Brief.

You can find The Signal Brief on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Thank you once again for listening and supporting us. We’d love to hear from you; write to us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram or X at @thesignaldotco.

Best,
Kudrat
on behalf of The Core

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