Edwin Cheah Yew

Edwin Cheah Yew Hong is a private-equity and consumer-retail executive best known for building and running MR.DIY's Indonesian business on behalf of the Southeast Asian growth-equity firm Creador. He joined Creador as an Executive Director in 2011, near the firm's founding, and spent roughly a decade there (2011–2023) working on the firm's consumer and retail investments across South and Southeast Asia. Creador itself is a Kuala Lumpur–headquartered mid-market private equity firm founded in 2011 that provides growth capital to companies in consumer, technology and healthcare; its Fund V closed at roughly US$700 million in December 2022.

His career before private equity was in telecommunications and consumer marketing. He held senior general-management and marketing roles across Southeast Asian telecom operators, including General Manager positions at PT AXIS Telekom Indonesia (2009–2011), Head of Marketing at PT Natrindo Telepon Seluler (2005–2009), and earlier consumer-business management at Maxis Communications in Malaysia. This operating background in customer acquisition, marketing and market expansion later mapped directly onto the retail rollout he would lead in Indonesia.

Since 2023 he has served as President Director (the equivalent of CEO/managing director) of PT Daya Intiguna Yasa Tbk — MR.DIY Indonesia — Creador's flagship Indonesian consumer investment and one of the country's largest home-improvement/variety retailers. Under his leadership the chain scaled rapidly (roughly 400 stores in its first five years, then another 400 in the following two, passing 900 and then 1,000 stores by early 2025) and completed a US$272 million IPO on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in December 2024. He concurrently serves as President Director of PT Kreasi Indah Varia, a related MR.DIY entity.

He was educated in the United Kingdom, earning a BEng in Electronic and Communications Engineering from the University of Bristol (1993–1996) and an MSc in International Management from King's College, University of London (1996–1997).

• Operates within Creador's growth-equity model: partnering with entrepreneurs and founders to provide growth capital and scale mid-market businesses across South and Southeast Asia, rather than writing small seed/angel checks.
• Sector emphasis mirrors Creador's core: consumer and retail, financial services, technology, and healthcare — with Edwin's own specialization firmly in consumer/retail expansion.
• His demonstrated playbook is aggressive physical-retail rollout in Indonesia: proving unit economics on a store format, then compounding store count quickly and funding further expansion via public markets (the 2024 IPO proceeds were earmarked "mainly to support the opening of new stores and expansion of the network").
• Value-add is operational, not just financial — he runs the portfolio company as an executive (President Director) rather than sitting only on a board, drawing on his telecom-era marketing and customer-acquisition experience.