Harikrishna Pujara
Finance Director | Chartered Accountant
Dubai
Summary
A seasoned finance leader with over 17 years of experience in Financial Planning and Analysis, Performance Management, Management Reporting, Investors Relations, Financial Operations, Auditing and Compliance. Passionate about solving problems at scale, building a learning culture, and delivering customer satisfaction. Skilled in establishing financial controllership, stakeholder management, developing team and partnering strategic decision-making. Recognised for business modelling, and analytical skills, with a track record of delivering actionable insights to drive business growth in the Payment Services, Fintech, and E-commerce industries. Additionally, an active angel investor, supporting emerging ventures in domains such as Agri-tech, EV tech, and renewable energy.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
6
6
years of post-secondary education
2
2
Certificates
Work History
Finance Director
Mumzworld FZ LLC
Dubai
11.2021 - Current
- Led company-wide budgetary planning and established Key Success Metrics.
- Enhanced unit economics visibility and accountability through weekly business reviews.
- Conducted scenario analysis to evaluate and prioritize growth strategies.
- Contributed to long-term planning discussions by providing insightful analysis on industry trends and competitor performance.
- Optimized resource allocation by identifying cost-saving opportunities through detailed expense analysis.
- Enhanced monthly reporting quality with insights and variance analysis.
- Engaged with existing investors for reporting financial performance and sourcing funds.
- Successfully managed external audits, ensuring accurate financial information was presented to external parties without discrepancies or delays.
- Enhanced stakeholder communication by producing clear, concise, and timely financial reports that supported informed decision making.
- Collaborated with cross-functional teams to develop revenue-generating initiatives and driving growth.
- Implemented E-invoicing to comply with KSA VAT regulations.
- Oversaw VAT, Zakat, and withholding tax compliance and optimization.
- Initiated project for improving local fulfillment in KSA by streamlining bulk shipments to KSA which resulted in (a) Logistics cost reduction by ~ 400 basis points (impact on Cost $2 Mn annually) (b) Improved conversion by ~ 30 basis point (Impact on GMV $10 Mn annually).
- Improved Inventory turnover by establishing (i) tighter controls on buying process (ii) improving buying process to reduce lead time (iii) renegotiated minimum buying commitments from international vendors.
- Led commercial negotiations with Payment service provider which resulted in cost reduction by 70 basis points (Impact $0.7 Mn annually).
Senior Product Manager
Amazon
Dubai
8 2018 - 1 2021
- Spearheaded High-Frequency Payment Categories (HFC) project from identifying opportunity, conducting market research, deliberating it through PR/FAQs, BRDs etc, Iterating User Experience (UX), prioritize competing projects, securing resources, lead product development with technology team, formulating product marketing plans and customer adoption
- Delivered growth from 0 to 50K users in 6 months, with first category launch (i.e., Prepaid Mobile Recharges) in UAE without spending on paid ads
- Responsible for Product Road map across portfolio of launches and setting priorities MVP / MLP feature set based on Impact assessment
- Program Management of 3P partners to secure availability of supplies, negotiate margin, SLAs etc
- Established strong relationships with key stakeholders, fostering collaboration across departments for seamless product development.
- Drove go-to-market plans for product releases in coordination with marketing team to raise awareness and increase adoption.
Finance Director
Amazon Payment Services (Payfort / CashU)
Dubai
08.2010 - 08.2018
- Led strategic planning, budgeting, financial controls, reporting, finance business partnering, finance operations, accounting, auditing and tax compliance, and performance management.
- Guided core financial processes for businesses, including annual operating plans, long term plans, and monthly/quarterly business reviews, weekly metrics review, bridges and forecast updates.
- Developed and led finance team of high performing finance professionals that support multi-faceted aspects of financial operation.
- Partnered with Business Leaders to provide advice and required support to drive process improvement throughout each organization and help with decision making.
- Ensured timely and accurate monthly financial reporting and communicating financial impacts to cross functional stakeholders, senior leadership and to board.
- Led external audits, ensuring accurate and timely representation of information.
- Established Key Success Metrics dashboard to track performance.
- Led implementation of SAP (ERP systems) Prepared and implemented various policies and procedures, build internal control and setting up of finance organization from scratch,
- Maintaining bank relationships and optimise cash management.
- Led project of local currency wallet from business requirement phase till Go Live.
- Led project of automation of payments, implemented Host-to-Host payments.
- Led project of automation of monthly invoices for payment processing business.
- Streamlined vendor prices country wide. Implemented Credit Review and approval process.
Asst. Finance Manager
Network International
Dubai
05.2009 - 05.2010
Finance Manager
Wentworth Real Estate
Dubai
01.2008 - 04.2009
Financial Analyst
Capital Industries & Investments LLC (CII)
Dubai
04.2007 - 01.2008
Deputy Manager - Finance
Dodsal E & C Pte Ltd
Dubai
02.2005 - 04.2007
Senior Associate
Syntel Private Ltd.
Mumbai
05.2004 - 01.2005
Education
Master of Commerce - Finance
University of Mumbai
Mumbai, India 05.2002 - 04.2004
Chartered Accountant - Finance
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India
Mumbai, India 05.1999 - 11.2003
Skills
Budget Planning & Forecasting
Accomplishments
- Established ground up budgetary planning process at Mumzworld to ensure (i) team's ownership (ii) Company's strategic objectives for growth and path to profitability are supported with bottoms up plan (iii) visibility of the growth building blocks and (iv) efficient allocation of resources.
- Developed simulator incorporating all business variables to arrive at order level unit economics - this helped sensitivity analysis and shape business strategy.
- Delivered various actionable insights which helped stakeholders' alignments to potential high impact projects.
- Build consensus to launch new business initiative “Subscribe and Save” program for Mumzworld, with potential to improve customer retention rate by 5% over three years. (Impact: GMV $11.5 Mn, Marketing spends Savings $1.25 Mn)
- Provided finance leadership through-out Payfort's growth journey from incubation to $5 billion TPV.
- Supported Payfort's business expansion in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Lebanon, and Jordan by incorporating local legal entities, opening new offices, and ensuring Tax, Accounting, audit, compliance, and reporting support.
- Successfully led Payfort's sell side financial due diligence for acquisition by Amazon.
- Launched High Frequency Payment Categories (HFC) on Amazon in MENA, first time on digital systems across Amazon and assumed P&L ownership for HFC business Unit.
- Lead the CashU Wallet business migration to compliance regime through the Stored Value Facility licensing and regulations in Singapore.
Certification
How to Make Strategic Thinking a Habit – LinkedIn
Timeline
Finance Director
Mumzworld FZ LLC
11.2021 - Current
Finance Director
Amazon Payment Services (Payfort / CashU)
08.2010 - 08.2018
Asst. Finance Manager
Network International
05.2009 - 05.2010
Finance Manager
Wentworth Real Estate
01.2008 - 04.2009
Financial Analyst
Capital Industries & Investments LLC (CII)
04.2007 - 01.2008
Deputy Manager - Finance
Dodsal E & C Pte Ltd
02.2005 - 04.2007
Senior Associate
Syntel Private Ltd.
05.2004 - 01.2005
Master of Commerce - Finance
University of Mumbai
05.2002 - 04.2004
Chartered Accountant - Finance
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India
05.1999 - 11.2003
Senior Product Manager
Amazon
8 2018 - 1 2021
Awards
Most Valuable Player of the Year (2015) – CashU
Awards
Most Valuable Player of the Year (2015) – CashU
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