Chew was born on 1 January 1983 in Singapore. His father worked in construction while his mother was a bookkeeper.
Upon his graduation from Hwa Chong Institution, Chew went on to serve National Service in which he was a commissioned officer in the Singapore Armed Forces.[5] After his military service, Chew went on to study at University College London, where he graduated in 2006 with a Bachelor of Economics degree. In 2010, he completed a Master of Business Administration degree at Harvard Business School, and while there completed a summer internship at Facebook prior to its
Chew is Singaporean. He is married to Vivian Kao, an American of Taiwanese descent. They had met in 2008 while studying at Harvard Business School. The couple have two childrens and live in Singapore.