When deal work piles up faster than your team can handle it, what is the smartest way to add capacity without losing quality or your client’s trust? David talks with Sailesh Sridhar and Lakshmikant “LK” Sharma, co-founders of Yajur Knowledge Solutions, about what advisors should always keep, what is safe to hand off, and why trust is still the most important word in M&A.

Summary

It’s Friday afternoon. You just won the listing, your client wants to go to market in three weeks, you have four other deals open, and your best analyst just gave notice. Every advisor hits this wall, whether they are a solo broker in year one or leading a team in year 30. Capacity, quality and speed all matter at once, and the market is not making it easier. PwC’s 2026 mid-year outlook estimates about 42,000 deals worldwide this year, down 13% from 2025, even as total deal value is on track for roughly $4 trillion on the back of megadeals. Fewer deals means every deal that goes to market has to be done right.

David is joined by Sailesh Sridhar and Lakshmikant “LK” Sharma, childhood friends and former Transworld M&A Advisors colleagues who founded Yajur Knowledge Solutions (formerly Valuecraft). Yajur builds the deal materials advisors take to market, including CIMs, pitch decks, financial models, valuations and management presentations. The firm has completed more than 600 engagements for more than 250 clients, on deals ranging from a half-million dollars to $500 million.

The conversation covers how Sailesh and LK saw experienced deal makers buried in spreadsheets and built a business to take on that work. They explain why every deliverable is built from scratch around the advisor’s own voice, how AI helps when it is supervised and hurts when it isn’t, and why the right question is never “How much is my business worth?” but “How much is it worth, to whom, and when?” The episode closes with a lightning round: keep it, hand it off, or bin it.

Key Takeaways

Keep the relationships and the judgment calls. Hand off the groundwork. Client calls, LOI negotiation and the management presentation stay with the advisor. Modeling, data room setup and buyer outreach are safe to hand off.

Hand off with context, not blind. Even the tasks Sailesh and LK would hand off, such as the CIM narrative, the valuation and the buyer list, work best when the advisor shares what they have seen on site and what they think. The first question Yajur asks is “What are you thinking?”

AI is an enabler, not a replacement. Skipping AI costs you speed. Using it without guardrails costs you trust. The person who signs the deal still has to explain every number, such as an EBITDA figure, to a buyer.

Numbers need context to mean anything. An ed-tech company’s working capital made it look unlike a typical SaaS business. Benchmarking against its peers changed how buyers evaluated it.

Pitch to the buyer, not just the business. A private equity group, a strategic buyer and a family office each see value differently. The same deal needs a different story for each.

Conviction beats hype. The worst CIM sins named on the show were unachievable, hyperbolic claims, ambiguity, and a lack of conviction.

Lightning Round: Keep, Hand Off, or Bin?

• Keep: client relationship calls, LOI negotiation
• Keep with collaboration: normalizing the financials, the management presentation, weekly client updates
• Hand off: building the model, data room setup, buyer outreach
• Hand off with context: the CIM narrative, the valuation opinion, the buyer list

Mentioned in This Episode

• PwC. “Global M&A industry trends: 2026 mid-year outlook.” PwC Global, June 23, 2026. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/deals/trends.html
• Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which David references on air (he could not recall the author’s name during the recording).

About the Guests

Sailesh Sridhar is a co-founder of Yajur Knowledge Solutions. He has more than 13 years in investment banking, holds the CFA charter, worked on more than 50 valuation engagements in EY’s transaction advisory practice, and served on the core M&A team at Transworld M&A Advisors.

Lakshmikant “LK” Sharma is a co-founder and the owner of Yajur Knowledge Solutions. He has more than nine years in cross-border M&A and financing, beginning at Tata Capital and continuing at Transworld M&A Advisors.

Yajur is a sponsor of M&A Source.

Connect with Yajur Knowledge Solutions

• Website: https://yajurks.com