What Valuation Standard Actually Governs an SFA Registered Valuer?

• Section 247 of the Companies Act, 2013 creates the registered valuer regime but does not itself prescribe methodology. It delegates that to rules. Where that regime itself came from, and why it exists as a separate credential at all, is covered in Why India Carved Out a Separate Profession Just for Valuation, and why this particular asset class carries the name it does, rather than "Equity Shares" or "Securities" alone, is covered in Securities or Financial Assets: One Half Defined, One Half Isn't.
• Rule 18 of the Companies (Registered Valuers and Valuation) Rules, 2017 is where the instruction actually lives: a registered valuer must follow valuation standards notified by the Central Government, but until such standards are notified, a valuer follows either (a) internationally accepted valuation standards, or (b) standards adopted by their Registered Valuers Organisation.
• A Rule 19 Committee was set up in 2018 to recommend formal standards. As of the most recent amendment to these Rules, the Central Government still has not notified formal Rule 18 standards. The 2017 transitional fallback is still live law for company-law valuations.

• Option (a), internationally accepted valuation standards, means the International Valuation Standards (IVS), issued by the International Valuation Standards Council (IVSC). A private international standard-setting body, not a treaty or Indian law directly, institutionally similar to how the IASB sets IFRS.
• Option (b), an RVO's own adopted standard, does not mean much in practice for most valuers. Registered Valuers Organisations generally publish governance documents (bye-laws, code of conduct, peer review and inspection policy) rather than a competing substantive valuation methodology. Several RVOs run continuing-education content specifically on applying IVS, which is a signal of where the field is converging rather than a rival standard.

• The ICAI Valuation Standards Board issued its own Valuation Standards effective 1 July 2018, mandatory for ICAI members undertaking valuation engagements under the Companies Act, and recommendatory for engagements under other statutes.
• ICAI frames these explicitly as a stopgap, effective only until the Central Government notifies its own standards under Rule 18.
• This is a professional-body obligation running through ICAI membership, separate from the Rule 18 statutory fallback that governs the registered valuer license itself. A valuer who is also a Chartered Accountant can be subject to both tracks at once, depending on their practice status.

• Neither the Companies Act side nor the IBC side has a Central Government-notified standard to point to yet. Both currently run on Rule 18's own unamended fallback: internationally accepted valuation standards, meaning IVS, or a valuer's RVO-adopted standard.
• Worth being current about what "IVS" actually points to at any given moment: under the edition effective 31 January 2025, the chapter governing Bases of Value is IVS 102 and the chapter governing Valuation Approaches is IVS 103, renamed and renumbered from the older IVS 104 and IVS 105 respectively, a shift covered directly in Valuation Approach vs. Valuation Method: What the Words Actually Mean.
• Company law, the RVO framework, and the international standard are not competing answers to the same question. They are each correct for a different slice of the same license, converging on IVS in practice even without a formal Rule 18 notification forcing the point.

IVS covers the conduct of valuation work generally. For the narrower question of how private funds actually value startup stakes between funding rounds, the standard that matters is the IPEV Guidelines, covered in Startup Valuation Methods: Deal Heuristics vs. Fair Value Reporting.