After his stint as a programmer and assistant musician, Harikrishna made his debut as an independent composer in actor Darshan's first production venture Jothe Jotheyali in 2006.

[1] Harikrishna started out working as an assistant to many leading music directors in 1990's including Hamsalekha, V. Ravichandran, Sadhu Kokila, Gurukiran among others.

The film, starring Prem and Ramya in the lead and Darshan in a guest role, was directed by Dinakar Thoogudeepa and had a successful run for about 25 weeks.

Some of the successful collaborations with Darshan include Bhoopathi (2007), Gaja (2008), Porki (2010), Prince (2011), Saarathi (2011) and Chingari (2012) to name a few.

His first collaboration with director - lyricist Yogaraj Bhat for the film Gaalipata (2008) starring Ganesh fetched him his maiden Filmfare award for his successful soundtrack.

Prince, Hudugaru, Vishnuvardhana, Saarathi, Paramathma and Jogayya turned out to be biggest musical blockbusters cementing the top status for him.

The success was followed in 2012 with Chingari, Anna Bond, Katariveera Surasundarangi, Addhuri, Jaanu, Drama Yaare Koogadali and Prem Adda receiving enormous positive response both musically and at the box-office.

The successful journey continued further in 2013 with many chartbuster soundtracks for the films such as Topiwala, Bachchan, Bulbul, Kaddipudi, Sakkare and Shravani Subramanya.

In 2014, his first musical release Gajakesari evoked mixed response while his scores for films such as Fair & Lovely and Ambareesha was expected to be successful.