Mentari Consulting offices Kuala Lumpur

Our Company

Founded on the conviction that good advice is given, not sold.

Mentari Consulting has worked quietly alongside Malaysian businesses since 2011, building a practice defined by the quality of its judgements rather than the volume of its engagements.

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Our Story

How Mentari Consulting came to be

Mentari Consulting was established in 2011 by a group of advisors who had spent the better part of two decades inside large professional services firms and found, over time, that the structure of those firms — their billing models, their growth imperatives, their preference for large engagements — put them at a distance from the kind of work they found most useful. The decision to build something smaller and more deliberate was not an act of dissatisfaction so much as a recognition of where real advisory value tends to reside.

The firm takes its name from the Malay word for the sun at its zenith — a reference to the clarity that direct light provides. The name reflects the founding intention: to see a client's situation plainly, without the distortions that self-interest or institutional inertia can introduce, and to say what that plain view suggests.

Since its founding, Mentari has worked almost exclusively with Malaysian family companies and owner-managed businesses navigating moments that benefit from outside thinking. These include transitions between generations, decisions about capital and ownership structure, questions about entering new markets or relinquishing existing ones, and the slower, more personal question of what the business is ultimately for. We do not maintain large client rosters. We take a limited number of engagements each year and give each one the time it warrants.

Our offices are on Jalan Tun Razak in Kuala Lumpur, which is where most of our conversations begin, though we regularly work with clients in Selangor, Johor, Penang, and further afield. We conduct our work in English and Bahasa Malaysia according to the preference of the principals involved.

The People

Who conducts the work

RA

Rizwan Abdul Hamid

Principal Advisor

Rizwan leads succession and governance engagements. He spent twelve years in corporate law before founding Mentari and brings a precise reading of family dynamics as they interact with legal structure.

SL

Siew Ling Tan

Strategy Advisor

Siew Ling works with founders and owner-managers on questions of direction. Her background spans consumer goods, regional retail expansion, and two decades advising owner-managed businesses across Malaysia and Singapore.

FK

Faridah Kamarudin

Research & Brief Lead

Faridah manages the Working Brief engagements and conducts the research and analysis that underpins all written deliverables. She joined Mentari in 2015 following eight years in financial services research.

Our Standards

How we conduct our work

Confidentiality as a condition

Every engagement is conducted under strict confidence. We do not discuss one client's affairs in the context of another's, and we do not reference client work in public communications without written consent.

Scoped engagements in writing

Before any engagement begins, the scope, deliverables, timeline, and fee are confirmed in a letter of engagement. We do not proceed on a handshake where the scope is open to interpretation.

No delegation without notice

The advisor you engage with at the outset conducts the work. Any involvement of additional colleagues is discussed with the client in advance and reflected in the engagement terms.

Evidence before opinion

Our recommendations follow from documented analysis, not instinct alone. Where a view rests on incomplete information, we say so explicitly rather than present false certainty.

Independence from product interest

We do not earn referral fees, placement commissions, or implementation revenue. Our only income is the fee agreed with the client, which keeps our advice free from the distortions that financial interest can introduce.

Plain language, written conclusions

Every engagement concludes with a document written in clear prose, not slide decks built for presentation. The aim is something the leadership team can read, keep, and act on without further translation.

Values and Approach

What we believe about advisory work

Business consulting in Malaysia operates across a range of models. Some firms offer broad transformation programmes; others sell technology-led diagnostics or provide interim management. Mentari occupies a different position. We are advisors in the older sense: individuals who can be trusted to think carefully about a specific situation, to say what they observe, and to produce a considered view in writing.

The leaders who come to us are generally not looking for a firm to hand a problem to. They want someone who will work alongside them, help them see their own situation more clearly, and put conclusions into a form they can use. We respect that quality of engagement and try to be worth it.

We place particular value on the family business context, which has its own logic. The relationships, the inheritance of culture and expectation, the interplay between business performance and family wellbeing — these are distinct from what is found in purely institutional or investor-owned firms. They require a different kind of attention, and we have spent over a decade developing the literacy to provide it.

Mentari is not a large firm. We are not trying to become one. The value of a practice this size is that it can be selective, careful, and honest in ways that scale makes harder. Those three qualities are what we offer, and they are what we intend to protect as the practice develops.

Begin the Conversation

Speak with one of our advisors

An initial conversation is always without obligation. We listen to what you are dealing with and share our view of whether we can be of use. There is no sales process attached.

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