Marketing an IVF clinic in India: what the ART Act allows

Fertility is the most hopeful purchase in healthcare and the most regulated one to talk about. A couple reading your Instagram page at midnight has usually been trying for years, has been told different things by different doctors, and is deciding whether to spend a sum that the ICMR's own health technology assessment puts at about ₹2.4 lakh per cycle in a private clinic. Whatever you post is going to be read very carefully.

The law reads it carefully too. The Assisted Reproductive Technology (Regulation) Act 2021 has been in force since 25 January 2022, and in the four years since, we have watched clinics swing between two mistakes: treating the Act as a ban on marketing, and treating it as if it did not exist. Neither is right. Our clients have included Nova IVF and Motherhood Fertility & IVF, so this is a question we have had to answer in writing. What follows is our reading with every section cited, and it is not legal advice.

The short answer

The ART Act contains one advertising prohibition. Section 32 bans any advertisement, in any manner including the internet, for sex-selective assisted reproduction, and punishes it with five to ten years in prison or a fine of ₹10 lakh to ₹25 lakh, or both. That is the whole of the Act's advertising law.

Everything else that limits what a fertility clinic can say comes from neighbouring statutes: the PCPNDT Act's ban on sex-determination advertising, the Surrogacy Act's ban on advertising surrogacy of any kind, the 2002 medical ethics code that stops doctors soliciting patients, the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act's schedule (which lists sterility in women), the Consumer Protection Act's definition of a misleading advertisement, and the ASCI code's demand for special restraint when advertising to people with infertility. Add two things the Act requires of clinics, registration and honest counselling about chances of success, and you have the shape of what a fertility clinic can promise: a lot about process, biology and care, and nothing about a baby.

What the ART Act says about advertising

Section 32(1), in the Act as passed:

The clinic, or bank or agent thereof, shall not issue, publish, distribute, communicate or cause to be issued, published, distributed or communicated any advertisement in any manner including internet, regarding facilities of sex selective assisted reproductive technology.

Section 32(2) sets the penalty: imprisonment of not less than five years and up to ten, or a fine of not less than ₹10 lakh and up to ₹25 lakh, or both. Section 26 backs it up by prohibiting a clinic from offering a couple or a woman a child of a pre-determined sex at all. The Act does not define "advertisement", does not mention success rates, guarantees or misleading claims anywhere in its text, and its 2022 Rules are silent on promotion too. The 2023 amendment dealt with andrologist qualifications and the June 2026 amendment with registration renewals.

So a clinic that wants to know what it may say about success, donors or pricing will not find the answer in the ART Act. It will find it in the laws around it, and in three of the Act's structural rules.

The structural rules that shape your marketing

Registration

Section 15 bars any clinic or bank from operating without registration, and section 9 creates the National ART and Surrogacy Registry that holds it. The registry's public dashboard shows 4,693 ART clinics registered against 8,138 applications, with 1,584 rejected, plus 939 ART banks and 756 surrogacy clinics. Registration is the first fact a patient can check and the first thing a competitor will check about you. Put the registration number and level on the website, and treat it as part of the brand. The Rules create two levels, Level 1 for IUI-only clinics and Level 2 for full ART, which makes "we offer IVF" a claim that must match a document.

Gametes, donors and intermediaries

Section 29 prohibits the sale, transfer or use of gametes, zygotes and embryos to any party, within or outside India, with a narrow exception for a patient's own gametes with the National Board's permission. Section 33(1)(b) makes it an offence to sell human embryos or gametes or to run an agency for trading in them, and section 33(1)(g) bans using intermediaries to obtain gamete donors. A first contravention carries a fine of ₹5 lakh to ₹10 lakh; a repeat carries three to eight years in prison plus ₹10 lakh to ₹20 lakh. Section 37 adds that the executive head of the clinic is deemed guilty unless due diligence is shown. Section 27 sets donor rules: semen donors aged 21 to 55, oocyte donors 23 to 35, one oocyte donation in a lifetime, at most seven oocytes retrieved.

For marketing this means that any copy which treats donor gametes as stock on a shelf is dangerous. "Donor eggs available" with a price attached, "wide donor database", "choose your donor's profile": each one edges towards advertising a trade the Act prohibits. Donor programmes run through registered banks, and the public-facing language should describe a regulated medical process with medical criteria.

Counselling about chances of success

Section 21(c) requires clinics to provide professional counselling about all the implications and chances of success, and to inform patients of the advantages, disadvantages, costs and risks, including multiple pregnancy. The Act does not say what a clinic may put in an advertisement about success. It does say what a clinic must tell a patient in person. An advertisement that guarantees an outcome contradicts a statutory duty to explain that outcomes are uncertain, and that contradiction is where an ASCI complaint or a council inquiry starts.

The five neighbouring laws

PCPNDT Act 1994

Section 22 prohibits any person or clinic from publishing or communicating any advertisement, in any form including the internet, regarding facilities for pre-natal sex determination or sex selection before conception, with up to three years in prison and a fine. Section 3A of the same Act names "a specialist or a team of specialists in the field of infertility" directly, so fertility clinics are squarely within it. The full text is on the Ministry's PCPNDT site, and since a 2016 Supreme Court order the Ministry has run a nodal agency that monitors online advertising for sex selection. Between this Act and section 32 of the ART Act, there is no safe way to mention the sex of a future child in any fertility communication. Captions about "completing the family" or "planning a sibling" should be read twice for what they imply.

Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021

Only altruistic surrogacy is lawful in India, and nobody may advertise surrogacy at all. Section 3(v) of the Surrogacy Act prohibits any clinic, doctor, intending couple or other person from promoting or advertising anything that seeks a surrogate, induces a woman to become one, or promotes a clinic for commercial surrogacy. Section 38 makes advertising commercial surrogacy by any means an offence punishable with up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to ₹10 lakh, and defines advertisement to include the internet, hoardings and wall paintings. A clinic registered for surrogacy may state that it is registered. It may not market the service.

The 2002 medical ethics code

Doctors at fertility clinics are bound by regulation 6.1.1 of the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations 2002, which treats soliciting patients and any publicity that invites attention to a doctor's skill or achievements as unethical. Regulation 7.12 lets a physician-run institution advertise only its name, the patients it admits, its facilities and its fees. The NMC's 2023 replacement regulations remain in abeyance, so the 2002 code governs. The precedent that matters for IVF is from 2016, when the Maharashtra Medical Council suspended two fertility specialists for three months over advertisements promising guaranteed results and money back, citing clause 6.1. We have a fuller guide to the doctor-versus-institution line in Healthcare social media marketing in India: what you can post.

Drugs and Magic Remedies Act 1954

The Act's Schedule of conditions for which no drug or remedy may be advertised includes sterility in women and sexual impotence, and section 3 separately bans advertising anything for preventing conception or procuring miscarriage. The Act is about drugs and remedies rather than clinical services, so a clinic explaining IVF is on different ground from a supplement brand promising fertility. But a clinic that sells or recommends a supplement, a diet plan or an "ayurvedic boost" alongside treatment has stepped onto the Act's ground, and ASCI found that 82% of the healthcare cases it handled between April and September 2025 breached it.

Consumer Protection Act 2019 and the ASCI code

A misleading advertisement under section 2(28) of the Consumer Protection Act includes a false guarantee and the deliberate concealment of important information, and the CCPA can fine up to ₹10 lakh, or ₹50 lakh for a repeat. A patient's success story on your feed is an endorsement under section 2(18) and must reflect their genuine experience, with any payment disclosed. The ASCI code requires every claim to be capable of substantiation and, in clause 1.5(d), demands special care and restraint in advertisements addressed to those suffering from infertility, so that claims do not exceed what is prudent by accepted medical standards.

The success-rate question

Every clinic asks this, and no statute answers it directly. Three things come close. The ICMR's 2005 National Guidelines for ART clinics, which were never law but formed the base of the 2021 Act, said that a clinic must let patients know its success rates, and must give them the rates for the recommended treatment both in the clinic and worldwide, as a referenced document updated every six to twelve months. The ART Act turned the spirit of that into the counselling duty in section 21(c). ASCI's code asks for substantiation and restraint.

Our working rule, which we would still want a clinic's own lawyer to confirm, is that a success rate may be published if it is true, specific and complete: the clinic's own figure, for a named year, per cycle started or per embryo transfer (say which), for a stated age band, with the denominator. "Up to 70% success" with none of those is a guarantee wearing a percentage. "Guaranteed pregnancy", "money-back baby", "100% success" are the phrases that have earned suspensions in this specialty, and they should not appear in a draft, let alone a post.

What the platforms add

Google's personalised advertising policy names infertility services among the categories for which you may not use your own customer data, lookalike audiences or Customer Match. You can still reach people through predefined demographic, location and in-market audiences. Meta's health and wellness data restrictions, in force since January 2025, can stop a fertility clinic's campaigns from optimising for leads or purchases, depending on how its website is categorised. If your enquiry campaigns weakened last year, this is the first thing to check, and the usual fix is an in-platform lead form and an appeal in Events Manager.

What fertility marketing can do

Read all of the above and you might conclude that a fertility clinic cannot say anything. Our experience is the opposite. The rules remove the lazy claims and leave the content that patients were looking for in the first place.

For Motherhood Fertility & IVF we made Meet Mitochondria, a science series about egg and sperm biology. It drew 517,000 impressions and 1.1 million views without a single word about outcomes. For Motherhood Hospitals we made The Fertility Trial, a courtroom-style series that put fertility food myths on trial; 953,000 impressions, 1.1 million views, and every verdict was a substantiated correction. Both are on our work page.

The pattern holds across the category. What works, and what the law permits:

Biology, explained properly. How ovarian reserve works, what AMH measures, why embryo grading exists, what male factor infertility is. Business Standard reported this year that male infertility is driving much of India's IVF growth, and almost nobody is explaining it to men.
The process, day by day. The first consultation, stimulation, retrieval day, the transfer, the two-week wait. Patients fear what they cannot picture.
Costs, in the open. The ICMR-NIRRCH policy brief puts average out-of-pocket spend at ₹2,37,851 per cycle privately and ₹1,10,104 in public hospitals; Business Standard quotes ₹1.2 lakh to ₹2.5 lakh for ICSI. A clinic that publishes its own range earns trust no campaign can buy, and Karnataka's KPME Act wants charges published anyway.
Doctors as explainers. Qualifications, what they treat, what they believe about honest counselling, with no rankings, product recommendations or superlatives attached.
Emotional support. The two-week wait, the failed cycle, how partners can help each other, when to pause. This is the content patients save and send to each other.
Real stories told by real patients, with written consent for social media, in their own words, about the experience of care rather than the fact of a baby, and with any benefit disclosed.

And the list of things to leave out is short: anything about a child's sex, anything that reads as a guarantee, anything that prices donor gametes like a product, anything about surrogacy beyond the fact of registration, any supplement or remedy claim, and a wall of baby photographs with no context, which is a guarantee made with pictures instead of words.

A checklist for every fertility post

Does it mention, hint at or imply the sex of a child? Delete it.
Does it mention surrogacy beyond "we are registered"? Delete it.
Does any number or phrase promise an outcome? Replace it with the process or remove it.
If a success rate appears, does it carry the year, the measure, the age band and the denominator?
Does any copy treat donor gametes as available stock? Rewrite around the regulated process.
Is a doctor being presented as an explainer or as a ranking? Keep the explainer.
Is any patient story consented, in the patient's words, about care rather than result, with benefits disclosed?
Is the registration number and level correct wherever the clinic describes its services?

Fertility clinics are the clients we have learnt the most from, because the constraints force the work to be better. If your clinic needs a feed that passes this checklist and still gets watched a million times, tell us about it in two minutes.

Frequently asked questions

Is it legal for IVF clinics to advertise in India?

Yes. The ART Act 2021 bans only advertising for sex-selective assisted reproduction (section 32). Clinics may advertise their services subject to the PCPNDT Act, the Surrogacy Act, the 2002 medical ethics code for individual doctors, the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, the Consumer Protection Act and the ASCI code, and must be registered with the National ART and Surrogacy Registry.

Can an IVF clinic advertise its success rates?

No law prohibits it, and the ICMR's 2005 guidelines expected clinics to tell patients their rates. The risk is in how. A rate that is the clinic's own, for a stated year, measured per cycle or per transfer, for an age band and with a denominator is a fact. A headline percentage without those is a claim that must be substantiated under the ASCI code and can be a misleading advertisement under the Consumer Protection Act.

Can a fertility clinic advertise for egg or sperm donors?

Donor gametes move through registered ART banks, and the Act bans selling or trading gametes and using intermediaries to obtain donors, with fines of ₹5 lakh to ₹10 lakh for a first offence. Public communication about donor programmes should describe the regulated process and the medical criteria, and should avoid prices, availability or a choice of donors as if from a catalogue.

Can an IVF clinic advertise surrogacy services?

No. Section 3(v) of the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act 2021 bans anyone from advertising or promoting surrogacy, including seeking surrogates or promoting a clinic for it, and section 38 punishes advertising commercial surrogacy with up to ten years in prison and a fine of up to ₹10 lakh. A registered surrogacy clinic may state that it is registered.

Are "guaranteed pregnancy" or money-back IVF packages allowed?

A guarantee contradicts the clinic's statutory duty under section 21(c) of the ART Act to counsel patients about chances of success, is a false guarantee under the Consumer Protection Act's definition of a misleading advertisement, and has led to suspensions by state medical councils, as in Maharashtra in 2016. Avoid the word and the structure.

What is the penalty for advertising sex selection under the ART Act?

Section 32(2) provides imprisonment of not less than five years and up to ten years, or a fine of not less than ₹10 lakh and up to ₹25 lakh, or both. The PCPNDT Act separately provides up to three years in prison and a fine for advertising sex determination.