The Principal
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Hinterland Group
Melvin Tan Wei Yang
Melvin founded Hinterland Group to bring together the two strands of his career — investing across Asian capital markets and building operating businesses from the ground up — under a single principal-led platform. Today he leads the Group’s strategy across public markets, real assets, operating businesses, and special situations.
Founder origins:
Melvin’s path into capital markets began, somewhat unusually, with capital markets for his own businesses. By the age of 16, while still a student at St Gabriel’s Secondary School, he had co-founded Reactive Systems — a small computer customisation and home networking business — sourcing batteries and parts from suppliers and reselling at half the prevailing market price. By 19, while pursuing a Diploma in Business Informatics at the Nanyang Polytechnic School of Information Technology, he had founded an IT and software development firm whose work included SMILES, an early online portal connecting teachers, parents, and students. The company crossed S$100,000 in revenue while Melvin was still in polytechnic. He also co-founded a social enterprise with the Social Innovation Park, hiring at-risk youth into the business of importing and selling fashion and accessories — an early expression of the operator-investor philosophy that defines Hinterland today.
In 2006, the Singapore Computer Society named him IT Youth of the Year at the SCS IT Leader Awards, recognising young technologists for “ongoing commitment to IT”. His story was featured across The Straits Times, The Business Times, The New Paper, The Sunday Times, and Lianhe Zaobao.
Current Roles
Beyond Hinterland, Melvin holds a portfolio of leadership positions across listed and private markets:
Co-Founder & Chairman, Frac
A real-world asset tokenisation solutions company, with one of Southeast Asia's first Securities Commission of Malaysia-approved Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs).
Group Corporate Advisor and Substantial Shareholder, USP Group Limited (SGX Mainboard)
Advising the Group's Board of Directors since 2023.
Chief Executive Officer, Supratechnic
A USP Group subsidiary and one of Singapore's longest-established marine and industrial distribution businesses, with operations across Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Investment fluency
Melvin’s personal practice spans the full breadth of Asian capital markets:
He approaches markets as a thesis investor — separating sentiment-driven narratives from fundamental catalysts, applying structured frameworks to position management, and fact-checking widely circulated claims before acting on them.
Listed equities and REITs on SGX
with an emphasis on capital structure, dividend sustainability, and corporate governance
Chinese A-share markets
Including thematic exposure to power-grid infrastructure and the data-centre build-out
Precious metals
With active positioning in physical gold and silver
Macro and currency themes
De-dollarisation, central-bank policy, and the implications for Asian assets
Real-world asset tokenisation
Tracking institutional initiatives at NYSE/ICE, Nasdaq, and across the digital-asset infrastructure stack
Capital markets background
Following national service and his early ventures, Melvin spent more than a decade in regional capital markets across two of Southeast Asia’s leading financial institutions and later his own firm:
- Managing Director — New Era Capital
- Regional Vice President, Group Investment Banking — Maybank Kim Eng
- Vice President, Retail Equities, Group Investment Banking — CIMB Group
That foundation in equity capital markets, M&A, and corporate finance — combined with hands-on operating experience across the Hinterland portfolio — informs how Melvin underwrites every investment, structures every transaction, and engages with every counterparty.
Public advocacy
As founding Chairman of the Securities Investors Association Singapore (SIAS) Youth Chapter, Melvin has championed financial literacy among Singapore’s students and early-career professionals — convening conversations with global investment leaders, partnering with institutions like the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore Exchange (SGX), and working to ensure that the next generation enters Singapore’s capital markets as informed, principled, and engaged shareholders. He believes that better investors make better markets — and that nation-building runs through the investment community.
Beyond youth education, Melvin has also been an active voice on shareholder rights and corporate governance in Singapore’s listed-company ecosystem — most publicly through his 2023 leadership of the minority shareholder coalition seeking board renewal at USP Group Limited, a campaign that drew sustained national press coverage and contributed to public dialogue on amendments needed to the Companies Act and Securities and Futures Act.
Get In Touch
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