§ 01 — Sounds Familiar?
The round is moving. The valuation shouldn't be the thing that stalls it.
You've signed a term sheet and the investor's counsel wants a registered valuer's report before the SHA closes. Or you've carved out an ESOP pool and need an exercise price your CFO — if you have one yet — can defend to the auditor. Or the board has simply asked for a formal valuation, and everyone is looking at you.
Two fears sit behind every founder call we take. The first: paying for a generic template that the next investor's lawyer picks apart in diligence, so you end up paying twice — once in fees, once in credibility. The second: getting a number so conservative, or so poorly explained, that it spooks the round you're trying to close.
Both are avoidable. A startup valuation done properly is a negotiation asset — it explains why the number is the number, in language an investor, an auditor and a lawyer can each accept from their own angle.
§ 02 — What We Do For You
Valuations for the moments that actually happen to startups
- Closing a round — startup valuation for share issues under the Income Tax Act, Companies Act and FEMA (where foreign money is coming in), built on your actual unit economics rather than a spreadsheet template. One coherent number that survives the investor's diligence and your compliance filings.
- Pricing the ESOP pool — ESOP valuation for grants, refreshes and accounting, so the exercise price is defensible to your auditor and fair to the team you're trying to retain.
- Board, buy-back or secondary — a full business valuation when the question is bigger than one instrument: founder secondaries, strategic conversations or a board that wants an independent view.
- Valuing what you've built — IP valuation when the technology, brand or data asset is the story, for licensing, transfer into a new entity or investor conversations.
Because we are a pure-play valuation practice — no audit arm, no competing service lines — there is no conflict for your investor's counsel to flag. Independence is structural, not asserted.
§ 03 — How The Engagement Runs
Built for board deadlines, not billing cycles
Our process is Scope → Analyse → Triangulate → Deliver & Defend, and for a founder it works like this:
- Scope — a short call to pin down purpose, deadline and what data you realistically have. You get a written scope and a fixed fee before anything starts. No hourly meters, no scope creep mid-round.
- Analyse & Triangulate — we work from your metrics, cohort data and projections, cross-checking methods rather than leaning on a single formula. An indicative valuation range lands in 5–7 business days for standard mandates — early enough to matter in the negotiation.
- Deliver — the full signed report follows in 10–15 business days, compliant with IVS, ICAI Valuation Standards and IBBI RVO norms. It includes a 1-page plain-English value narrative — the version you can put in front of an investor or your board without translating.
- Defend — when the investor's lawyer or your auditor asks questions, the senior valuer who signed the report answers them. A post-delivery advisory note flags what to watch for the next round.
§ 04 — FAQ
What founders ask us first
We're pre-revenue. Can you even value us?
Yes — early-stage valuation is a discipline of its own, not a discounted-cash-flow model with heroic assumptions bolted on. We use methods suited to your stage and triangulate against your round terms and market evidence, then document why those methods fit. The absence of revenue is a modelling constraint, not a dead end.
Our term sheet closes in three weeks. Is that enough time?
For standard mandates, comfortably. You get an indicative range in 5–7 business days and the full signed report in 10–15. If your structure is unusual, we tell you at scoping and commit to a timeline in writing before you engage us.
Will the report satisfy the investor's lawyers and our compliance filings?
That is the design goal. Reports follow IVS and ICAI valuation standards, cite the regulatory basis for the purpose — Income Tax Act, Companies Act or FEMA as applicable — and document every material assumption. The signing valuer stays available through diligence questions.
What if the number comes out lower than our round price?
We tell you early — that's what the indicative range at day 5–7 is for. A gap between the valuation and the negotiated price is a conversation to have before documents are signed, not a surprise in the final report. The value narrative explains the drivers, which is usually what closes the gap in the investor conversation.
We don't have a finance team. How much of our time will this take?
Less than you fear. At scoping we send a precise data checklist matched to your stage — we work with management accounts, your cap table and the metrics you already track, not an enterprise data room. Most founder-side effort is one working session plus follow-up questions over email.