Plug & Play’s CEO Corner: Polina Marchenko

Plug and Play brings together retailers and start-ups who offer specific technology and expertise that can relieve merchants’ pain points. Customer Disruption highlights one of those start-ups in each issue with a brief Q&A. This issue, the spotlight is on Polina Marchenko, CEO of KptnCook.



What does KptnCook do?



KptnCook is a mobile app for instant recipe discovery and simple grocery shopping. With a growing amount of recipe content online, the decision-making became complicated and overwhelming. Our aim is to solve the choice overload problem. Every day we offer three curated recipes. After 24 hours the recipes disappear and three new ones will replace them. The recipes are paired with real products and prices from grocery stores as well as beautiful step-by-step pictures.



How do retailers leverage your solution?



KptnCook is the mobile marketing platform and a sales channel. In the shopping list, users see the relevant product recommendations, so that we also eliminate the choice overload on this level. KptnCook has a significant advantage compared to online or print ads in that our users are exposed to the brands exactly when they make an in-store purchase decision. Retailers can leverage increased customer engagement and the ability to sell bundles of products.



What is your background as CEO and/or what lead to the development of the company?



While studying for a Master’s of Business Administration degree, I was involved with a startup accelerator program run by Deutsche Telekom and experienced the corporate and the startup life simultaneously. I realized that my entrepreneurial self would not be comfortable in a big corporation. Later on, I worked as a product manager for a later-stage fashion e-commerce startup. I pitched KptnCook idea last year at the Startup Weekend in Berlin, found my team and quit my job the very next day.