About Us
The beginning
Jeanbeanstudio and Wren began, like all good things, with food.
Some of Founder Jean's fondest memories growing up are of playing 'masak-masak' with her plastic toys where she could pretend to be a chef and cook 'invisible food'. During her teenage days, her mother, Mama Ong, would ask her to help stir-fry some dishes and thinking back, she enjoyed those times and wished she could have done more.
As for Raju, his earliest memories were of meals cooked by his amma, especially when he was asked to taste the seasonings of non-vegetarian dishes since amma became a vegetarian.
For both of them, family meals were what kept their families together, at the table, always.
Years later, life moved quickly. Although they ended up in vastly different industries (Raju in oil and gas; Jean in media), fate brought them together. In 2019, just before the world shut down, Jean and Raju got married.
When the pandemic arrived and the world slowed down, their home kitchen came alive. Every day, Jean cooked meals inspired by both sides of her heritage, Chinese dishes from Mama Ong and Indian recipes from amma. What started as sharing meals and recipes online during the pandemic slowly grew into Jeanbeanstudio — a place where the joy of home cooking was shared.
But something was still missing.
The discovery that changed everything
In April 2023, they travelled to India for a family trip and bought back a small cast iron wok. At that time, it felt like just another kitchen purchase, but little did they know, it would totally change the way they looked at cookware forever.
The more Jean cooked with it, the more she fell in love with it — the heat retention, the simplicity, and the way it handled everything from stir-fries to slow cooking was different.
The more Raju tasted the foods cooked in cast iron, the more he felt the subtle difference in taste.
And suddenly, the last missing piece of their journey became clear.
If Jeanbeanstudio was about sharing recipes and meals, Wren would be about the cookware that makes those meals possible and better.
A cookware built to last and grows better with time. And no other cookware comes closer to achieving this than a well-made cast iron wok that doesn't just last years, but lasts generations.
The setback
The journey to create a custom cast iron wok began in November 2023 by visiting China. Founders Jean and Raju engaged a cast iron manufacturer and designed their dream cast iron wok from scratch. After 8 months of tireless planning and RM50,000 of personal savings spent, the stocks finally arrived, and the disappointment began. What was supposed to be a premium high-quality cast iron wok ended up as handmade, defected woks, as Jean would say: it's a 'cincai' (a Manglish slang for 'reckless') quality work that cannot be accepted.
It was one of the hardest moments in their entrepreneurship journey as small businesses and there was no turning back. Their vision for Wren had been very clear from the start and to release a cookware that lasts generations, they were determined to do the right thing no matter how difficult it was.
The defected cast iron wok stocks were all scrapped. No compromises to the quality were made.
Starting again. Wren 2.0 begins.
New manufacturer, new refined cookware design, and more stringent Quality Control. Every single last penny they had was spent.
Finally, Wren cast iron woks (the Chella Series) were then launched on 11th Jan 2026 to the masses.
Our mission
Cast iron cookware has existed for centuries. Long before modern coatings and Teflon cookware were invented, families cooked with simple materials designed to last decades.
We believe those principles still matter today.
Wren exists to bring cooking back to those fundamentals:
- Cookware that lasts.
- Cookware that improves with time.
- Cookware that produces actual healthy cooking.
- Cookware that becomes part of your family kitchen.
And if we've done our job right, a Wren cast iron wok might still be in your family kitchen many years from now, seasoned by countless meals, stories, and gatherings around the table. Let Wren cast iron wok guide the way for meals that will be remembered for years to come.
Let the cast iron journey begin, with us — Wren.