Insiya Hariyanawala, CPA, Brings an Operational Lens to Finance

For Insiya Hariyanawala, CPA, finance is most useful when it moves beyond reporting what has already happened. Her focus is on connecting operational data with the decisions that shape pricing, production, investment, and growth. As Financial Controller at Airstaus, she brings together more than 11 years of experience in full-cycle finance, financial planning and analysis, standard costing, multi-entity reporting, and commercial performance management.

That perspective is grounded in an uncommon combination of disciplines. Hariyanawala began with a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology from the University of Mumbai, then expanded into business through a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Administration before earning her Chartered Professional Accountant designation in Ontario. Scientific training helped establish an analytical foundation; accounting and business education gave her a framework for applying that discipline to organizational challenges.

Building the structure behind better decisions

A defining part of Hariyanawala’s work has been creating financial infrastructure rather than simply maintaining established systems. For a newly launched manufacturing subsidiary, she designed the financial, cost accounting, and budgeting framework from the ground up. The assignment included developing standard costing models and pricing structures suited to a new operation.

The resulting structures did more than organize reporting. According to her submitted career overview, the pricing and costing work expanded initial product contribution margins by 15%. The experience illustrates her broader approach: financial information should be designed around the decisions people need to make. In a manufacturing environment, that means understanding how materials, labour, inventory, capacity, and pricing interact—not treating them as isolated figures.

Her planning responsibilities have also included annual budgets, rolling forecasts, multi-year FP&A models, multi-entity consolidations, variance tracking, and capital expenditure return-on-investment evaluations. Together, these activities give leaders a clearer view of near-term performance while supporting longer-range strategic planning.

Modernizing how finance works

Technology has been another central theme in Hariyanawala’s career. She has led enterprise resource planning implementations and migrations involving Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Odoo ERP. Her automation work has covered inventory tracking, bills of materials, and intercompany transactions—areas where disconnected or manual processes can slow reporting and make analysis more difficult.

These changes shortened monthly close and reporting cycles by 35%, based on her approved synopsis. She also developed interactive Power BI dashboards and executive reporting frameworks to provide timely visibility into customer and product-level profitability, backlog margins, and operational key performance indicators.

The significance of this work lies not only in faster reporting, but also in how finance teams use their time. Hariyanawala’s goal is to reduce manual data gathering so that finance professionals can devote more attention to analysis, recommendations, and forward-looking decisions. Simplicity and automation, in this view, are not ends in themselves. They create room for more valuable work.

Finance as a cross-functional partner

Hariyanawala describes her role as that of a growth partner rather than only a scorekeeper. That principle is reflected in her collaboration with sales, marketing, operations, supply chain, and plant management. She has helped create custom pricing and estimation tools that improved turnaround time for commercial teams by 30% while maintaining attention to gross margins.

Her work with supply chain and plant leaders has also extended to warehouse layouts and production capacity. The resulting operational changes increased overall throughput by 25%, according to the member’s submission. Such projects require finance to understand the realities behind the numbers and communicate recommendations in terms that different teams can use.

Ownership, clarity, and stronger teams

Across these experiences, a consistent thread is end-to-end ownership. Hariyanawala values clear priorities, transparent communication, accountability, and collaboration across departments. She also places importance on maintaining financial controls and data integrity, recognizing that useful analysis depends on reliable underlying information.

Mentorship is part of that same commitment. She emphasizes coaching junior talent, encouraging continuous learning, and setting high standards while building capable teams. For Hariyanawala, modern finance leadership combines sound controls with curiosity, practical communication, and a willingness to improve established processes.

Her career shows how technical rigor can support a broader commercial purpose. By translating complex information into clear choices, she positions finance as an active participant in how an organization operates, adapts, and plans for sustainable performance.