FOGSI asked our CTO to demonstrate the technique. Here is why that matters to you.

Most of what a fertility brand says about itself is unverifiable. Anyone can claim a good laboratory. What is harder to arrange is other people asking you to show them how you do it.

That is the useful thing about the conclave, and the reason this page exists. Cell Mate’s co-founder and CTO, Rajnish Sehgal, was invited as Demonstrator, FOGSI Fertility Regulation Conclave 2026, Jaipur, to run the station on in-depth semen analysis and sperm preparation. The people watching were obstetricians, gynaecologists and embryologists from across India.

What was actually demonstrated

Everything was worked live, with the microscope field projected beside the bench rather than shown from slides:

• The steps before the microscope. Volume, liquefaction, pH and viscosity, which is where a result is most often lost before anyone has looked at a single sperm cell.
• Concentration and total count, read field by field from a properly loaded counting chamber.
• Motility, separated into its grades, rather than collapsed into one percentage.
• Morphology under strict criteria, read at the scope with the field on screen.
• Vitality, which changes what a low-motility result actually means.
• Sperm preparation. Swim-up, single and double density gradient, and how the method is chosen to suit the sample rather than the protocol sheet.

Why preservation kept coming up

The subject of the conclave was fertility regulation, and preservation came up in almost every conversation at the station. Not as a niche option, but as something clinicians are now asked about weekly.

The reasons are not mysterious. People are building careers and partnerships later. Semen quality has been falling for decades, across populations. Cancer treatment saves far more lives than it used to, and survivors want families afterwards. And male factor is involved in about half of all infertility cases (WHO), which is still news to a lot of people.

What has been missing in India is not the science. Freezing eggs and sperm is well established and has been for years. What has been missing is somewhere to do it that is not attached to an IVF clinic, with no treatment being sold alongside it, where the decision stays with the person making it.

Why any of this matters if you are freezing sperm

A sample is assessed before it is frozen. How it is assessed, and how it is prepared, decides what is actually stored and what you are told about it.

This is not a small detail. The same sample can produce meaningfully different reports in different hands, because counting properly takes time, morphology under strict criteria takes training, and vitality and DNA fragmentation are often skipped entirely. If the assessment is thin, the number on your report is a guess with a decimal point.

A note on what this is, and what it is not

Teaching and demonstration engagements are personal professional engagements. FOGSI selected an andrologist to demonstrate technique at a station. It did not vet, approve or endorse a company, and we will never suggest otherwise.

The honest version is the stronger one anyway: the person who built Cell Mate’s laboratory is the person these bodies ask to teach the technique. He has been doing that since 2001, at conferences, medical colleges and hospital departments across the country. You can read the full record here.

What we do with all of it

Cell Mate is a fertility preservation brand, not a clinic. We freeze eggs and sperm and we store them. We do not perform IVF or any fertility treatment, which means we are never competing with the doctor treating you, and a sample frozen with us can be taken to any clinic in India or abroad.

That is also why the teaching is straightforward. There is no referral pitch at the end of a session, because there is nothing to refer for.

Frequently asked questions

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