Magani unites tradition with the new; reimagining the traditional batik shirt for the needs of our contemporary society. We combine Indonesia’s rich cultural heritage with the latest innovation in performance wear material to build the ultimate durable and comfortable shirt for the modern Indonesian man who is constantly on the move.
As we celebrate Indonesia’s heritage, we also celebrate the individuals who are unintimidated by the sweat and hard work required to defy challenges, push boundaries, and move Indonesia forward.
Meet the #MaganiMen who have inspired us that with grit and endurance, there are no limits to what you can achieve. #NOSWEATNOLIMIT
---
#MaganiMen Melvin Hade, Co-Founder of Kayella Consumer Partners, started his professional career in management consulting with McKinsey & Company and venture capital with Global Founders Capital and Northstar Group, before founding Kayella with his wife to build breakthrough, high-quality retail assets for the modern Indonesian. Guided by grit, purpose, and a focus on strong products and storytelling, he aims to create trend-setting retail concepts that elevate lifestyles while prioritizing quality over scale.
---
Could you share a bit about your life and career journey—what first sparked your interest in business and how that path eventually led to founding Kayella Consumer Partners?
I started my career as a management consultant before shifting to becoming a venture capital investor and along these 9 years of professional experience, I have always felt a genuine interest and curiosity for the consumer and retail sector. As an avid consumer myself from food to wellness experiences, I love crafting products and services that I myself, my wife and family can enjoy and use. This has led me to founding Kayella Consumer Partners where we envision to build and invest in the retail brands and concepts for the modern Indonesian consumers.
You’ve worked with some of the most notable investment firms in the region from a young age. What personal principles or values have guided you throughout your journey in finance and entrepreneurship?
I am privileged to have worked with reputable and stellar organizations and people in my 10 years of professional career. I have always believed that one of the major contributors in my journey amongst many is the 10 mindsets that I adopted during this experience which are mindsets like leveraging your purpose in life as your ultimate source of motivation and grit to other important mindsets like sense of ownership when given a responsibility or task and the power of over-delivering in executing those responsibilities. At the end of the day, I believe that there are so many intelligent people out there but determination and grit is the rare commodity that I always try my best to hold close to me.
Founding Kayella is a bold shift from traditional VC to a more long-term, brand-focused approach. What inspired you to take this route, and what’s been the most unexpected challenge in building this kind of fund?
After deep diving on the consumer and retail sector and speaking to fellow founders in the space, I personally think that the traditional VC investing model is not relevant for the consumer and retail sector with a few exceptions. There are structural gaps that do not meet the expectation of a consumer & retail founder running profitable businesses and delivering great dividend payouts with how the VC model works which typically discourage founders from taking dividends and rather fully focus on chasing growth after growth.
I also saw the momentum since mid-last year before I left my post at my previous investment firm where the consumer and retail sector is so vibrant, alive and full of great opportunities. As I turn 30 years old earlier this March 2025, I decided to setup my own Firm so I can fully realize my investment approach, playbook and ultimately make my own investment decisions without any external influence so I can be fully liable of my own investment decisions and risk-rewards.
What is the vision behind Kayella Consumer Partners, and what do you ultimately hope to contribute to the consumer landscape in Indonesia?
The vision behind Kayella Consumer Partners is to become a retail holding and conglomerate that owns, operates and manages high-quality retail assets in Indonesia. We don’t chase over quality or amount of retail footprints across the country even though that is not a bad thing, but we rather prioritize the quality of our retail assets.
We want to be trendsetters, creating new waves of retail concepts and trends that the Indonesian consumer have not seen in the past. When we find a product-market fit we want to be bold and aggressive in scaling it into the future, without jeopardizing the quality of our assets and brands.
Melvin wears short sleeves Ocean Monogram
Indonesia’s consumer sector is fast-changing. What excites you most about the current market, and what do you think is still overlooked?
In contrast to some critics and observers on the general macroeconomic environment, I feel relatively bullish and optimistic about the Indonesian consumer sector as we see encouraging results and performances from our consumer and retail businesses so far. We believe that going forward, the mass-affluent to affluent segment remains to be a thriving demographic that looks forward to elevating their lifestyle and has the purchasing power to enjoy the finer things in life.
We think that there are a wide range of retail concepts that the Indonesian consumer has not experienced or touched yet that we hope to bring this to the market at the right time in the next 24 months. Therefore, we have been busy with our openings and launching new retail assets across the Greater Jakarta area.
From your experience working with both large capital firms and now early-stage consumer brands, what have you learned about what makes a business truly sustainable?
As cliche as it sounds, I personally believe that a stellar product and services is at the core of how businesses continuously thrive in any category or business. This includes being able to adapt with the changing customer behaviour, competitive landscape and trends in order to keep the product relevant across a large demographic. At the end of the day, customers want to enjoy a cup of smoothies at the best smoothies brand, indulge in recovery massage at the best spa and grab a loaf of bread at the best bakery in town, no one likes a bad product.
This is also why we are so open to customer feedback because we are anxious when our customers don’t feel that our product and services do not exceed their expectations.
How do you view the relationship between investing and storytelling—especially in building consumer brands that connect with people?
First and foremost, I believe that storytelling is at the core of what we do as we tell stories to our customers, to our real-estate partners and to our management and teams in order to bring the best of everyone to realize a truly great concept and product. Storytelling goes hand in hand with investment as every investment has its own story, narratives, ups and downs and sometimes unpredictable.
In your day-to-day life, what routines or habits help you stay grounded and focused as a founder and investor?
I am rarely at the office, especially when we are preparing a series of pre-opening checklists and spend my time mostly at the sites to monitor how our retail assets are shaping up before the Grand Opening. This process reminds me how it takes a village to launch even 1 small retail business perfectly and the meticulous detail that we need to pay attention to reminds me that we should always be super hands-on on every project that we own, operate and manage, big and small.
Even then, it is not always a guaranteed success and we are ready to going through phases of ups and downs in order to make our retail assets thrive in the long-run.
Outside of your work in finance and business, what do you enjoy doing to unwind or recharge?
Family and friends, including my partners and team that have felt like family members. What I love about building my own firm is that I am able to surround myself with authentic and loving people that genuinely care about each other and our joint businesses. This is by the far the most effective and efficient way for me to recharge myself.
Melvin wears short sleeves Patina Kawung
In your view, what role does personal health or an active lifestyle play in maintaining long-term clarity and decision-making?
Though striking a balance between maintaining great personal health and pushing your limits and boundaries professionally and in business can be tricky to manage, health remains to be the bedrock of any functioning human being in order to perform in their personal life, family life and careers.
I do sometimes compromise my own sleep and health when there are important milestones that need to be achieved in the short-term but I refuse to compromise this for the long period of time as it will affect my overall performance, wellbeing and lifestyle with my family. In normal situations, my wife and I are the type of person that really needs our 8 hours of sleep in order to fully function and be at the best of our game on a day-to-day basis.
Luckily for us, personal health, wellness and sports is a part of our core investment strategy where we develop these assets across where we live in South Jakarta so we can be a user of our own product that we crafted.
What does success look like for you—both in business and in life?
Personally, success means spending how I want to spend my time the next day at my own liberty without any pressure or control from any other party as I want to be able to spend sufficient time with my wife, two daughters and family. Success also means maintaining a pristine health condition, physically, mentally and spiritually so that my overall well-being and the well-being of those around me are at optimal levels. All in all, it boils down to the word “joy” as my ultimate metric of success in my personal life.
Professional or in business, I define success as maintaining a platform that is auto-pilot in a sense that the businesses can run without my oversight and control, even though I choose to monitor my retail businesses and assets very closely. But obviously over time, I want to remain close on the aspects that I know best such as investments, finance, branding and product design while I partner with the brightest minds out there for other aspects of the business.
This is what I personally strive to achieve in the next 10 years, so that in my 40s I could still be involved in certain aspects of the business that I truly enjoy and passionate about.
If you could speak to your younger self when you were just starting out in your career, what advice would you give?
I live a life with no regrets and I wouldn’t change my younger self’s life in any way. I think I have been grateful for the decisions and paths that I have taken, along with the luck that was showered upon me by God.
I do have advice to the young generations that I occasionally meet, coach and speak to, which is to find your purpose in life and to leverage it as your foundation for your vision and mission in life and source for your motivation.
Living life without purpose is very challenging for me because I immediately don’t have a compass to navigate where and what I want to do on a day-to-day basis and in the long-run, but having one helps me differentiate on a daily basis which activities are productive and meaningful, and which ones are just noises and disturbances.
What personal or professional goals are you still excited to pursue in the years ahead?
We are excited for the next 10 years of building high-quality retail assets that would last for more decades to come and this is a challenging task as we typically see cycles of trend in the retail scene that doesn’t last so much. We want to be known as trend-setters not copycats and become a platform for creative minds, talented product specialists to craft unrivaled products and experiences for the modern Indonesian consumers.
Aside from that, I am keen to send my first daughter, Mikayla next year for her first year of Elementary School and my second daughter Mirella for her first year of kindergarten at the same school as her elder sister. I think seeing them grow fascinates me and it keeps making me excited waking up the next morning knowing that these two beautiful souls look forward to seeing their Daddy come down and send them to school and pick them up again later in the afternoon.
My best moments in life now are always around my family and I am excited to do more and more of these in the years ahead.
For young people looking to start something of their own—whether in business or investment—what would you want them to know that you’ve learned through experience?
Build something that you know everything about, inside and out, not just surface level understanding but down to the core and across dimensions. Building is always a tough and lonely experience, and there is no single playbook of doing it. Some would say don’t listen to any advice and just focus on building, while others would suggest the other way. Some say start as early as possible, but some would say gain professional experience first and then build it when you have enough experience. But then the question is how long is enough?
My point is there is no specific rule or theory of how to build something and therefore, my only suggestion would be to build something that you know everything about, am a user and super passionate about it such that you don’t feel like you are working when you craft your product and services to build your company.
We are also a young group in the consumer and retail scene and we don’t want to portray like we have achieved all the successes in the world but if I can personally say one thing, it is the above when it comes to “building”.
What about Magani resonated with you?
I really like how Magani reinvented traditional batik wear by merging the traditional batik design with modern day comfortability and flexibility in a fabric that offers utmost flexibility and comfort for day-to-day wear.
I personally have been a big fan of Batik Shirts since my early days as a management consultant 9 years ago, but sometimes the traditional batik fabric is too thick, too stiff and uncomfortable to wear on a day-to-day basis to the point that it would hurt by upper back and neck due to the stiffness of classic Batik Shirts.
When I first tried Magani, I immediately felt the silk-like sensation on my skin, lightweight and ultimate flexibility in moving my body, arms and neck. This is especially useful when I travel a lot to monitor our construction projects and sites, which is mostly outdoors so the silk-like sensation definitely keeps my body cool.
This is a great example of what we are trying to do at Kayella Consumer Partners as well which is challenging the status quo with innovation and new concepts that could hopefully become hidden gems.
Click here to follow Melvin Hade on Instagram.
Click here to follow Kayella Consumer Partners on Instagram.