Visit to clinics out, now kit to test male fertility in privacy

Men won’t need to leave home and dodge glances at the clinic now for a ‘sperm test’. The biggest challenge in dealing with men’s sexual health, which involves semen analysis, is the very “public” nature of an otherwise private activity — sperm sample collection. But a DIY kit, launched this month by a Bengaluru-based reproductive health and sexual wellness company, promises to break that barrier.

Home collection had, so far, been a problem because sperm cells die within minutes of ejaculation, their motility going down 60% within 30 minutes of leaving the body. But this kit keeps the sperm sample safe for up to nine hours after ejaculation. The medium that does so was developed after a decade of research by Dr SS Vasan, cofounder and chief medical officer of Janani, the firm that came up with the kit.


“Infertility, whether male or female, is still taboo in India. Men don’t want to come forward to get tested. But semen test is the only biomarker for male reproductive health,” said Nilay Mehrotra, 28, founder of Janani, which will launch the kit in Mumbai within two weeks and expand to other cities after.

A kit like Janani’s, which costs Rs 1,200, could help. “A home kit would encourage men to get tested for male infertility, which makes up 40% if all infertility cases in India …,” said Dr Bharati Dhorepatil, consultant infertility expert, Nova IVF Fertility, Pune. “We see that most men think that being able to have intercourse means they are fertile. This is not true.”

Mehrotra found the same. When he tried speaking to men about reproductive health for market research, they shied away. “Men don’t discuss sexual health. If they talk about it with other men, they get mocked,” said Mehrotra. “Men are not ready to believe something may be wrong with their reproductive health. They ask for proof. Even if they believe something is wrong, they are just too shy to come forward and get tested. This made us realise a product like ours was needed … By our calculations, andrology diagnostics in India is a US$3.5-billion market, but largely untapped.”