What Valuation Standard Actually Governs an SFA Registered Valuer?

Section 247 of the Companies Act, 2013 creates the registered valuer regime but prescribes no methodology. It delegates that to rules. Where the regime came from, and why it exists as a separate credential, is covered in Why India Carved Out a Separate Profession Just for Valuation, and why this asset class carries the name it does 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 lives. A registered valuer must follow valuation standards notified by the Central Government, but until such standards are notified, follows either internationally accepted valuation standards or standards adopted by their Registered Valuers Organisation.

A Rule 19 Committee was set up in 2018 to recommend formal standards. The Central Government still has not notified any. The 2017 transitional fallback is live law.

Rule 18 offers two limbs, and they are not of equal weight.

• Internationally accepted valuation standards means theInternational Valuation Standards, issued by the International Valuation Standards Council. A private international standard-setting body, not a treaty or Indian law directly, institutionally similar to how the IASB sets IFRS.
• An RVO's own adopted standard does not mean much in practice. RVOs generally publish governance documents — bye-laws, code of conduct, peer review and inspection policy — rather than a competing substantive methodology. Several run continuing-education content specifically on applying IVS, which signals where the field is converging rather than offering 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 licence itself. A valuer who is also a Chartered Accountant can be subject to both tracks at once, depending on practice status.

Neither side has a Central Government-notified standard to point to. Both run on Rule 18's unamended fallback: internationally accepted valuation standards, meaning IVS, or a valuer's RVO-adopted standard.

It is worth being current about what "IVS" 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 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 one question. Each is correct for a different slice of the same licence, converging on IVS even without a Rule 18 notification forcing the point.

IVS covers the conduct of valuation work generally. For the narrower question of how private funds 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.

Name the standard in the engagement letter and in the report, and name the edition. "In accordance with internationally accepted valuation standards" is the statutory phrase, but the chapter numbers moved in 2025, and a report citing IVS 105 for approaches is now citing a chapter about something else.

If you are also a Chartered Accountant, say which capacity you are signing in, because the ICAI standards are mandatory in one and recommendatory in the other. And treat the Rule 18 fallback as the operative rule rather than a temporary one. It has been the answer for the whole life of the regime.