Jonathan Jay talks with Hari Krishnadasan about moving from startup grind to acquisition-led growth, using deferred consideration, buying outside his core sector, and testing a practical no-money-down deal process.
Hear Hari Krishnadasan explain how acquisition became a serious growth strategy after COVID exposed the risk of relying on one trading model.
Three acquisition lessons from an entrepreneur who tested the process in real deals.
Hari built businesses from scratch and saw how much time, sacrifice, and operational strain that approach demands. Buying an existing company gave him a faster route to revenue, staff, systems, and market presence.
The first fashion acquisition worked because the seller valued continuity, lifestyle, and protection of the Bali manufacturing community as much as price. That opened the door to deferred consideration.
Hari bought two barber shops to prove the acquisition model could work outside his main sector. Once the process was validated, he began looking at a broader buy and build strategy.
This episode follows Hari Krishnadasan, one of Jonathan Jay's mastermind clients, as he explains how he moved from building businesses from zero into using acquisition as a growth strategy. After years in fashion, distribution, manufacturing, and brand building, Hari bought an established fashion business through a deferred consideration deal and later realised that the same logic could become a repeatable acquisition model.
COVID forced a reassessment. With non-essential retail closed and his existing businesses exposed to the same market risk, Hari began looking for diversification. He focused on direct-to-vendor opportunities, studied seller motivation, and acquired two barber shops despite not being a barber, using a no-money-down structure built around the seller's need for speed, certainty, and a clean exit.
The interview covers practical acquisition thinking for buyers who want to move from theory to action. Jonathan and Hari discuss seller psychology, staff retention, operational handover, social media improvements, cash collection, sector selection, and the next stage of buy-and-build planning, including possible childcare nursery acquisitions and finance-led deal structures.
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