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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. This story starts with

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Speaker 1: a young girl in India, barely a teenager who loves

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Speaker 1: doing hair and makeup and helping her mom put on

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Speaker 1: her sorry. When she grows up, she'd like to become

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Speaker 1: a beautician. And in twenty twenty three, she wanted what

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Speaker 1: so many teens around the world want? A smartphone?

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Speaker 2: And was your phone?

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Speaker 1: Tevinaga lifeks. The girl says that like everyone in her generation,

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Speaker 1: she loves using phones. She'd asked her mom for one,

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Speaker 1: but her mom said the family couldn't afford it. Then

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Speaker 1: she heard about a way she could make the money herself.

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Speaker 1: And because of what it involved and for reasons that

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Speaker 1: will soon become clear, the girl and her family have

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Speaker 1: asked that we not use her name. The idea came

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Speaker 1: from someone she trusted, Whoo.

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Speaker 2: Mirida di.

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Speaker 1: Zethik Miran Dadikata made moh lek dekichachi le Titi Chachi

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Speaker 1: means aunt in Hindi. It's what the girl called her

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Speaker 1: grandmother's neighbor. The woman's name is Sema. We're not using

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Speaker 1: her last name because it could help identify the girl,

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Speaker 1: and Sima knew away the girl could get the money

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Speaker 1: for a phone, but if she went through with it,

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Speaker 1: she wasn't allowed to tell her mom.

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Speaker 3: The girl said that Sema didn't really explain what it was.

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Speaker 3: She has said herself, you know, I'm a kid like

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Speaker 3: I didn't really understand what was being done to me

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Speaker 3: or what was going to happen to me.

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Speaker 1: That's Natalie Obiko Pearson. She's an investigative reporter for Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: who was based in India for many years.

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Speaker 3: Sema just told her this is how you can make

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Speaker 3: fifteen thousand rupees really quick, and so she was like, okay,

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Speaker 3: I'll go along with it.

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Speaker 1: Fifteen thousand rupees is about one hundred and eighty US dollars.

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Speaker 3: It might be more than what her mother makes in

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Speaker 3: a month, so it's it's a lot of money in

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Speaker 3: her world. But again, she had no idea what she

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Speaker 3: was getting into. All she wanted was a phone, and

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Speaker 3: it ended up having these consequences that she never could

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Speaker 3: have imagined.

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Speaker 1: She'd agreed to sell her ex In doing so, she

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Speaker 1: was pulled into a global industry that's boomed in the

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Speaker 1: last twenty years, especially within India.

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Speaker 3: Fertility is a big business everywhere, but especially in India

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Speaker 3: just because of the size of the market there and

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Speaker 3: global money has been pouring into that market. And there

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Speaker 3: are parts of India where you would walk along a

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Speaker 3: single street and there would be like four or five

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Speaker 3: fertility clinics there that had cropped up within the span

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Speaker 3: of a few years. The analogy that everybody use is

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Speaker 3: like they were like mushrooms. Once they began to grow,

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Speaker 3: they just began cropping up everywhere.

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Speaker 1: Today on the show The Human Egg Trade, a special

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Speaker 1: series from Bloomberg's investigations team, and The Big Take podcast.

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Speaker 1: While IVF or in vitro fertilization has been around since

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Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, early success rates were low, but over

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Speaker 1: the last two decades, advancements in technology and funding from

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Speaker 1: the biggest investment banks and private equity firms have made

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Speaker 1: it possible for the fertility industry to flourish. Now, a

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Speaker 1: batch of human eggs is extracted from a woman somewhere

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Speaker 1: on the planet roughly every fifteen seconds. Most are from

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Speaker 1: women who plan to use those eggs themselves, but at

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Speaker 1: least six percent come from women who donate their eggs.

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Speaker 1: That's the fertility industry's term donate, though in reality many

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Speaker 1: of these women are paid. Bloomberg reporters across the globe

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Speaker 1: have spent the last year trying to understand this new

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Speaker 1: booming market for human eggs. The stories they found shed

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Speaker 1: light on a supply chain where the prize commodity is

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Speaker 1: harvested not from f yields, fisheries or mines, but from

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Speaker 1: the bodies of women and even girls. It's a global

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Speaker 1: and opaque market where a demand is so great that

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Speaker 1: even where regulations are in place, there are powerful incentives

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Speaker 1: to evade them. That's been the case in India, where

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Speaker 1: our series starts, and where the story of One Girl

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Speaker 1: shows how far some people will go to get a

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Speaker 1: cut of this trade, even if it means exploiting a child.

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Speaker 1: Our story starts after the break. Bloomberg's Natalie Obiko Pearson

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Speaker 1: says there are few reasons why India is seen as

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Speaker 1: the de facto capital of the fertility industry.

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Speaker 3: One is because the sheer size of the population makes

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Speaker 3: the global IVF market there extremely large.

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Speaker 1: The other reason is cultural.

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Speaker 3: There's an incredible amount of pressure on women to give

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Speaker 3: birth in India, like as soon as you get married,

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Speaker 3: the pressure begins of like when are you going to

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Speaker 3: get pregnant when and to bring us a sun and

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Speaker 3: that drives the egg donation market because couples there are

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Speaker 3: often willing to maybe just try like one cycle of

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Speaker 3: IVF and then if they don't get pregnant, will immediately

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Speaker 3: opt for a donor egg. And it was such a

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Speaker 3: striking phenomenon that a couple IVF doctors actually said it

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Speaker 3: took them by surprise.

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Speaker 1: At first.

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Speaker 3: They would have thought that people would have opted to

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Speaker 3: go for a few more cycles, you know, wanting their

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Speaker 3: children to have their own genetic makeup. But they were like, no,

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Speaker 3: the pressure and the expense was so much that they

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Speaker 3: were like, let's just go to donation straight away.

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Speaker 1: In other words, a couple might bet that buying another

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Speaker 1: woman's eggs could give them a quicker path to a

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Speaker 1: successful pregnancy. Natalie says fertility clinics in India serve a

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Speaker 1: wide range of customers, people from all parts of the country,

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Speaker 1: all around the world, and from all walks of life.

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Speaker 1: But she says the typical donor has a much narrower profile.

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Speaker 3: It's less privileged women coming from marginalized communities. I mean,

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Speaker 3: if you just think about the actual procedure of an

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Speaker 3: egg donation. It's an incre invasive procedure. It requires days

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Speaker 3: of hormones. You have to go under general anesthesia to

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Speaker 3: have the eggs extracted. So what person is going to

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Speaker 3: do that? Completely altruistically right, Like, the people who are

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Speaker 3: doing it are usually doing it because they need money,

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Speaker 3: and so that means that most of the donors are

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Speaker 3: coming from poorer neighborhoods.

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Speaker 1: And more vulnerable backgrounds. In twenty twenty one, after sixteen years,

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Speaker 1: eight drafts and three parliamentary studies, Indian lawmakers passed the

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Speaker 1: country's first regulations regarding egg donations. The new law created

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Speaker 1: a national registry of fertility clinics. It also made it

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Speaker 1: illegal to sell eggs, though the industry still manages to

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Speaker 1: pay donors by compensating for related costs like their time

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Speaker 1: and travel, and it also made it illegal for anyone

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Speaker 1: under twenty three years old to donate.

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Speaker 3: Anecdotally, you hear that egg donations dropped off quite a

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Speaker 3: bit after the law came in, just because a lot

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Speaker 3: of people didn't want to be on the wrong side

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Speaker 3: of the law, and maybe it got more difficult source donors.

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Speaker 1: At least to source those donors legally. The law was

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Speaker 1: supposed to prevent egg donations from underage girls, but Natalie

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Speaker 1: says it's still fairly common. They're often brought in by

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Speaker 1: people like Sema, people known in the industry as agents.

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Speaker 3: They're not employed by any particular company or clinic. They're

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Speaker 3: out there and they're in the neighborhoods trying to source

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Speaker 3: women to donate or rather sell their eggs. And so

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Speaker 3: these are often former egg donors themselves, or they might

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Speaker 3: be a cleaner at a hospital. It might be a

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Speaker 3: woman in the neighborhood who is also sourcing blood donations

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Speaker 3: and kidney donations and the like, and so word travels

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Speaker 3: along the grapevine and a lot of less privileged neighborhoods

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Speaker 3: that this is one way to make some fast cash

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Speaker 3: if you need it.

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Speaker 1: The girl's family comes from one of the lowest tiers

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Speaker 1: in India's cast system. She says her father isn't around much,

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Speaker 1: her mother's parents help them get by, so the money

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Speaker 1: Seema offered the girl for her eggs was tempting. Once

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Speaker 1: she signed on, the plan unfolded over two weeks. It

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Speaker 1: started with shots, so.

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Speaker 3: It was ten days of visiting the clinic and going

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Speaker 3: four hormones shots to stimulate her ovaries to produce the eggs.

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Speaker 3: She was doing this all in secret from her family,

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Speaker 3: so she did talk about how she was getting really

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Speaker 3: sick of it at the end, and Seema was having

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Speaker 3: to sort of cajole her and make sure she attended

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Speaker 3: her appointments. And you know, I've undergone IVF myself. I

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Speaker 3: know what those hormone shots are like, and they can

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Speaker 3: really really mess with you. You end up feeling incredibly bloated,

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Speaker 3: your emotions are all over the place. It can be

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Speaker 3: painful at times, to.

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Speaker 1: The extent that you know. Did she have any doubts

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Speaker 1: during that process.

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Speaker 3: I think there were moments where she was like, oh,

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Speaker 3: I'm done with this, this is like too much.

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Speaker 1: But the girl told Natalie that by that point, Sema

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Speaker 1: said it was too late.

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Speaker 3: Sema was like, no, you can't back out. You're going

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Speaker 3: to your appointments. You know, we're spending money on you

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Speaker 3: to receive these medications, so you're going to go.

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Speaker 1: The girl was about thirteen years old, though her family

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Speaker 1: isn't sure of her exact birthday. That meant that what

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Speaker 1: she was preparing to do was illegal, So on the

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Speaker 1: morning of her retrieval, Sema helped the girl disguise her age.

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Speaker 1: They started with her outfit.

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Speaker 3: Once her mother left the home, the girl got up

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Speaker 3: and she had been told to wear a sari. So

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Speaker 3: the girl typically wears what we call of archamza's in India.

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Speaker 3: They're kind of like a tunic and it can make

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Speaker 3: a slim body look very slim. The sary was intended

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Speaker 3: to make her look older, curvier, like an adult.

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Speaker 1: The girl met Sema outside the clinic. Another woman was

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Speaker 1: with her, an agent named Anita. The girl told Natalie

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Speaker 1: it was Anita who had arranged the fake id, and

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Speaker 1: the girl says the two women had a few more

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Speaker 1: tricks to make her look older before she went out.

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Speaker 2: But the Awadani about THEI think.

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Speaker 3: They began putting on all of these sort of accessories

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Speaker 3: that signify a married woman in India, so like a

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Speaker 3: vermilion bindi on the forehead and a Mongol Sutra wedding necklace,

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Speaker 3: and then they had a toddler ready for her. So

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Speaker 3: they had lied to the clinic and said that she

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Speaker 3: had already given birth twice, and so she was given

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Speaker 3: a fake child to take into the clinic with her.

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Speaker 1: Did the people in the clinic believe that she was

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Speaker 1: who she said she was, and she was as old

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Speaker 1: as she said she was.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's that's one of the things, right, I mean,

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Speaker 3: clearly some red flags did go up the doctors who

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Speaker 3: were counseling her before the procedure. At one point they

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Speaker 3: asked Sema to leave the room because they wanted to

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Speaker 3: hear from the girl herself. And then they were like, okay,

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Speaker 3: why are you doing this? How many children have you had?

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Speaker 1: The girl says she answered those questions the way Sima

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Speaker 1: had coached her. If the doctors were skeptical, they didn't

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Speaker 1: stop the procedure from going forward. They wheeled the girl

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Speaker 1: into the operating room, put her under anesthesia, and started

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Speaker 1: the retrieval.

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Speaker 3: They take a really really long needle and they push

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Speaker 3: it up your vagina and they go to the ovaries

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Speaker 3: where follicles have been developing. And so the follicles, probably

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Speaker 3: dozens of them in many cases, are about half an

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Speaker 3: inch long, and they put the needle in there and

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Speaker 3: they aspirate the egg out, so they sort of like

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Speaker 3: suck it out, and they pull these out and they

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Speaker 3: put them into a dish. It's usually quite quick. It's

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Speaker 3: over in about ten minutes.

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Speaker 1: The girl says she woke up from the procedure feeling woozy.

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Speaker 1: She was in pain, her stomach hurt, and she was

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Speaker 1: alone Peter.

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Speaker 3: When she comes to she's like, nobody's there, the doctor's gone,

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Speaker 3: nobody's talking to me, just.

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Speaker 2: A man, says.

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Speaker 1: Tombulenkan Giant.

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Speaker 3: She sees a nurse. She's like, can I go and

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Speaker 3: the nurse is like, yeah, sure, So she gets up

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Speaker 3: and leave and she walks out of the clinic. Anita

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Speaker 3: goes to an atm nearby, pulls out fifteen thousand rupees,

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Speaker 3: hands it to Sema. Sema takes her cut, gives eleven

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Speaker 3: thy six hundred rupees to the girl, and goes immediately

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Speaker 3: to buy her phone.

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Speaker 1: After the girl bought her phone, she tried to hide

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Speaker 1: it from her mom, but her secret didn't stay secret

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Speaker 1: for long. Coming up how that secret was exposed and

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Speaker 1: how the girl's story connects to some of the biggest

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Speaker 1: financial players in the world, Bloomberg's Natalie Obico Pearson went

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Speaker 1: to see the clinic where the girl's eggs were retrieved.

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Speaker 1: It's part of a chain which is one of the

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Speaker 1: biggest in India. It's called Nova IVF Fertility.

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Speaker 3: Walking up to the Nova IVF clinic.

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Speaker 1: It's on a busy street in Varanasi, a city of

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Speaker 1: a few million on the banks of the Gandhes River

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Speaker 1: in northern India. From the outside, the clinic looks more

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Speaker 1: office building than hospital.

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Speaker 3: Big glass building with sort of blue reflective windows, modern

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Speaker 3: and there's like an eyeglasses shop on the bottom which

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Speaker 3: is selling designer sunglasses for more than the girl got

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Speaker 3: paid for her eggs.

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Speaker 1: The building is also covered with billboards. Our colleague at

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Speaker 1: VET Pelipu helped Natalie translate them from Hindi north West.

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Speaker 1: Who become a mother and father? Stot your journey your

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Speaker 1: mother father road.

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Speaker 2: It start your journey to.

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Speaker 1: Become a mother father there. Nova IVF has had some

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Speaker 1: big name investors.

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Speaker 3: Its growth was funded by Western financiers. You know. Goldman

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Speaker 3: Sachs was one of its very early investors. It was

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Speaker 3: set up by a US based private equity firm. Today

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Speaker 3: it's owned by a TPG, another private equity firm.

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Speaker 1: The rush to cash in on India's fertility industry has

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Speaker 1: ramped up in recent years.

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Speaker 3: I'd say in the last maybe like five to eight

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Speaker 3: years or so, five to ten years. That's where you've

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Speaker 3: seen sort of like the really big money, really sophisticated

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Speaker 3: investors coming in, so Silicon Valley investors, private equity firms,

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Speaker 3: banks coming in and taking stakes in local IVF chains,

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Speaker 3: expanding them.

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Speaker 1: All of that business has created more competition among clinics

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Speaker 1: and also among agents, and that's actually how the girl's

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Speaker 1: secret was exposed.

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Speaker 3: Seema and another agent end up getting into a quarrel

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Speaker 3: on the street over the girl. The other agent is

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Speaker 3: accusing Sema of having stolen a client, and one of

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Speaker 3: the girl's relatives overhears this quarrel, and so word goes

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Speaker 3: back through her family, eventually back to her mom, and

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Speaker 3: her mom confronts the girl and says sees the phone

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Speaker 3: and that's when things sort of like explode.

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Speaker 1: The girl's mother says that she was angry when she

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Speaker 1: found out what her daughter had done sub but since

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Speaker 1: everyone was already starting to gossip, she didn't want to

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Speaker 1: pile on. She says, what had been lost was lost,

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Speaker 1: so as a mother, her job was to make sure

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Speaker 1: something was done about it.

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Speaker 3: So the mom confronts Sema. She ends up filing a

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Speaker 3: police complaint.

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Speaker 1: The girl's mother says, even now she doesn't fully understand

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Speaker 1: what was done to her daughter, and Natalie says her

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Speaker 1: confusion shows in that police complaint she filed.

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Speaker 3: When her mother first went to the police and filed

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Speaker 3: the complaint, she wrote down something like, you know, something

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Speaker 3: has happened to my daughter. She's still a virgin, Like

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Speaker 3: please help me. This is terrible and so it you know,

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Speaker 3: egg donations sort of get conflated with sex and maybe

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Speaker 3: sexual assault and the kind of implications that can have

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Speaker 3: for a woman in Indian society. Violation a violation, and

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Speaker 3: it sparked the kind of questions that really are are

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Speaker 3: are the worst question that an Indian woman can face,

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Speaker 3: is you know, is she going to be able to

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Speaker 3: have children? So people don't understand this procedure, they're asking

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Speaker 3: in the streets, their gossiping is she ever going to

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Speaker 3: be able to have kids?

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Speaker 1: The complaint sparked an investigation.

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Speaker 3: The medical officers report was pretty explicit. It's said this

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Speaker 3: could not have happened without the cooperation of the clinic

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Speaker 3: and its employees, and yet police never seemed to follow

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Speaker 3: that lead. They arrested the five low level people and

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Speaker 3: then never ended up going back to the c and

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Speaker 3: holding any of them accountable.

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Speaker 1: Sema was among those arrested and has since been released

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Speaker 1: on bail. Anita, the woman who helped secure the girl's

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Speaker 1: fake ID, was also arrested along with three men. The

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Speaker 1: doctors and staff at Nova IVF, the clinic that performed

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Speaker 1: the retrieval, have not been named in the case.

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Speaker 3: What Nova said to us, They said, look like we

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Speaker 3: do our best to ensure that cases like this don't happen,

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Speaker 3: but to some degree our hands are tied, like it's

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Speaker 3: not our expertise to try and weed out fake IDs.

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Speaker 3: This is where the government has to bring in biometric

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Speaker 3: verifications so that this kind of thing doesn't happen, and

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Speaker 3: we would be the first people to adopt it.

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Speaker 1: Goldman Sachs is no longer an investor in Nova IVF

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Speaker 1: and a client to comment. TPG, the private equity group

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Speaker 1: currently backing the clinic, deferred comment to Nova. Nova also

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Speaker 1: said that they've been lobbying the Indian government to mandate

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Speaker 1: more stringent ways of verifying donors identities and ages, but

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Speaker 1: they say the government has not responded. After word got

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Speaker 1: out in the girl's community that she had sold her

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Speaker 1: eggs to buy a phone, the stigma she faced was

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Speaker 1: severe comment. The girl says, there are people who call

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Speaker 1: her names, who scorn and taunt her. Govern questions why

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Speaker 1: people are only blaming her and not blaming the adults involved.

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Speaker 1: Blamed blame, she says, people keep talking about it, but

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Speaker 1: no one asks her why she did what she did.

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Speaker 1: She says, she knows she made a mistake. Marino Kisleo

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Speaker 1: taiu he Eliza Nicols.

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Speaker 3: She had no idea what she was getting into. All

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Speaker 3: she wanted was a phone and it ended up having

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Speaker 3: these consequences that she never could have imagined. So she's

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Speaker 3: dropped out of school. You know, in stigma in close

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Speaker 3: knit communities like the ones that she lives in, is

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Speaker 3: something very difficult to escape from.

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Speaker 1: Natalie says, while the girl's story may seem extreme, it's

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Speaker 1: not that unusual in India, one of the world's largest

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Speaker 1: markets for donor eggs. But the same forces that swept

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Speaker 1: up the girl, great demand and great opportunity for profit

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Speaker 1: are not limited to India. They're present wherever the human

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Speaker 1: egg trade happens, and as the market has grown, so

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Speaker 1: has the potential for corruption and exploitation.

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Speaker 3: To me, fundamentally, it's about the commodification of women's body

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Speaker 3: and the commercialization of reproduction. So big investors are in

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Speaker 3: this for the money, and we know the kind of

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Speaker 3: returns that private equity tends to expect in their investments.

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Speaker 3: I think it's a story of what happens when you

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Speaker 3: have tremendous growth and tremendous demand without guard rails. Just

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Speaker 3: the infrastructure and the regulations and the ability to enforce

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Speaker 3: is not there in India to make sure that procedures

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Speaker 3: like this happen ethically. And I think that's something that

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Speaker 3: I want people to think about when they come away

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Speaker 3: from the story. If you're ever in the position where

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Speaker 3: you need a donated egg, to think about where is

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Speaker 3: that coming from and how can you be sure that

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Speaker 3: it was sourced sustainably.

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Speaker 1: That was the first episode in The Human Egg Trade,

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Speaker 1: our special series about the booming global market for human

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Speaker 1: eggs and the people whose lives are swept.

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Speaker 2: Up in it.

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Speaker 1: The next episode in the series takes us to Greece,

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Speaker 1: where this intense demand sets the stage for a crime

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Speaker 1: with profound consequences.

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Speaker 2: So Maria was lucky. She eventually did get pregnant and

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Speaker 2: she had a child, and last year the police asked

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Speaker 2: he had come down to the police station, and she

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Speaker 2: walked into the room and there were two police officers

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Speaker 2: and a third person who was a psychologist. And when

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Speaker 2: Maria saw the psychologist, her heart sunk. She knew she

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Speaker 2: was about to get bad news. They sat her down

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Speaker 2: and they broke the news to her that their investigation

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Speaker 2: had found that her eggs had been stolen.

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Speaker 1: Look for that episode next Friday. For more in depth

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Speaker 1: reporting on how the human egg has become a precious

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Speaker 1: resource traded around the world, read The Egg, an investigation

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Speaker 1: by Bloomberg BusinessWeek and The Big Take, which spans five

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Speaker 1: continents and eleven countries. You can read The Egg on

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Speaker 1: the Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg dot com or in the January

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Speaker 1: twenty twenty five issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek. This is the

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Speaker 1: Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder. This episode

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Speaker 1: was produced by David Fox. It was edited by Tracy Samuelson,

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Speaker 1: Lauren Eder, and Ken Armstrong. It was fact checked by

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Speaker 1: Adriana Tapia and mixed and sound designed by Alex Sugia

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Speaker 1: and Jessica Beck. Special thanks to Ed Vett, Pelipu, Vicki

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Speaker 1: Fung Need two, Suda mohandas Bloomberg Originals and Pratish Narayanan.

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Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our senior editor is

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth Ponso. Our executive producer is Nicole Beamster. Bor Sage

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Speaker 1: Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. If you liked this episode,

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Speaker 1: make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever

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Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts. It helps people find the show.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. We'll be back next week.