India’s first and largest stem cell bank, LifeCell, has introduced its new, lowered, base price of Rs. 9,990 for its umbilical cord stem cell banking service on the eve of International Parent’s Day, which is celebrated globally on 4th Sunday of July. With this affordable pricing, it is expected that more parents would choose to preserve their newborn's precious stem cells, thereby making India, the world's largest holder of this critical healthcare asset.
 
India being the largest birthing country in the world with over 27 million births every year, the concept of umbilical cord stem cell banking holds a huge growth potential given the benefits of stem cells in modern medicine. The adoption of this service is growing rapidly worldwide, with 50 per thousand babies in the USA, and 250 per thousand babies in Singapore having their umbilical cord stem cells preserved at birth.

Speaking about the launch of the new pricing, Mayur Abhaya, managing director, LifeCell said “There are many necessary expenses that expectant parents face around the time of childbirth. At LifeCell, we believe that price should not be the reason in pushing stem cell banking – a wise lifetime decision, down or out of the list of things to be done before the arrival of the baby. With our high growth experienced over the last couple of years we have been able to achieve substantially higher economies of scale, through which we are now able to offer much lower pricing, thereby bringing umbilical cord banking within the consideration set of expectant parents and promote greater uptake of the service. Day after day, we are witnessing growing application of stem cells in medicine. Greater adoption translates to establishing a vast stem cell asset in the country, thereby preparing the future generations to receive advanced healthcare”.

LifeCell’s founder and vice chairman, Abhaya Kumar said, “It is beautiful to begin the journey of parenting by blessing the baby with something that would last a lifetime, especially when it involves protection of the baby’s health. We are committed to making consistent investments to ensure that this critical healthcare service is affordable for expectant parents across the country. I am confident that with this increased access, the future generations will benefit from this service to live longer and stay healthier.”

LifeCell will soon be launching its new mass media campaign featuring brand ambassador Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, positioning stem cell banking as an important preparatory step to be taken during pregnancy. The company, backed by serial entrepreneur S Abhayakumar, has enough capital to support its market investments and had in 2013 raised equity financing from leading venture capital provider Helion Ventures. The company enjoys strong positive cash flows and can leverage its balance sheet (which currently has no long-term debt) for further capital needs.

In India, though the adoption of the service is only at 4 per thousand babies born, the annual growth of the service at 100% makes it the fastest growing worldwide.

This growth has largely been achieved through awareness creation initiatives by LifeCell, which in late 2013, had partnered with celebrity parent Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a patron of LifeCell service herself. LifeCell has now emerged as world’s 3rd largest stem cell bank in terms of number of new units preserved.