Feb 26, 2026
Brands spend billions trying to reach Gen Z. But they can't tell a student from a bot.
Think about it. A fashion brand wants to run a student discount campaign in Poland. What are their options? Scatter public coupon codes across the internet - and watch them leak to Reddit within hours. Run Facebook ads targeting 18-24 year-olds - and hope the algorithm gets it right. Partner with a student organization - and reach 200 people at one university.
None of these actually reach verified students. Not at scale. Not in Central and Eastern Europe.
In Western markets, platforms like UNiDAYS and Student Beans have built massive businesses solving this for the UK and US. UNiDAYS has 29 million users and generates an estimated $73 million a year. The model is proven. But in CEE - a region with 17-20 million students - there's been no one doing this properly. No technology. No infrastructure. No platform that can tell a brand: "yes, this person is an active student at Jagiellonian University, verified through the university's own system."
That gap is where UniPerks operates.
What UniPerks actually does
UniPerks is a B2B2C platform that connects brands with verified students. The product works through a mobile app, a web platform, and a browser extension - all built around one core capability: automated student verification integrated directly with university login systems.
This is the key differentiator. UniPerks doesn't ask students to upload their student ID or send a photo of their enrollment certificate. Instead, students verify by logging into their university's own system. The algorithm checks their status in real time. By the end of 2025, 95% of all students in Poland had the ability to verify themselves this way - and the platform is growing fast.
For brands, this means something specific: when they run a campaign on UniPerks, every single user who sees it is a confirmed, active student. No fraud. No leaked codes. No wasted budget.
The platform already hosts offers from around 80 brands - including Revolut, Amazon, H&M, Samsung, Uber, Sephora, Nike, and Pizza Hut. Some partnerships are direct, others run through affiliate networks. The model is performance-based: brands pay for actual results (sales, leads), not impressions.
Why the verification piece matters more than it looks
Student verification sounds like a feature. It's actually the foundation of an entirely different business model.
When a platform can reliably identify who is and who isn't a student, it unlocks several things at once. Brands get a clean channel to a specific demographic. Students get offers that are actually exclusive - not public coupons anyone can use. And the platform collects first-party data about a demographic that's notoriously hard to track through traditional advertising.
This matters especially now. Third-party cookies are disappearing. Digital ad targeting is getting blurrier. Brands are scrambling for verified, first-party data sources. UniPerks offers exactly that - a pool of verified users with known attributes (university, city, field of study) that brands can target with precision.
And the verification itself can become a standalone product. UniPerks is already piloting Verification-as-a-Service (VaaS) - an API that lets external companies check whether someone is an active student, directly on their own websites, without going through the UniPerks app. Imagine a bank offering a student account and verifying eligibility through UniPerks in real time. Or a telecom activating a student plan. There is no real competitor doing this in Poland today.
Why now?
Three shifts are converging. First, Gen Z's spending power is real and growing - Polish students spend roughly 60 billion PLN a year, including about 12 billion in e-commerce. Brands know this audience matters, but they've had no efficient channel to reach them.
Second, the death of third-party cookies and tightening privacy regulations are making traditional online targeting less effective. First-party, verified data is becoming the most valuable currency in digital marketing.
Third - and this is the timing argument - global players like UNiDAYS have focused their expansion on Western Europe and haven't built dedicated solutions for CEE markets. The region's diversity (different languages, university systems, local brands) makes it hard to serve from London. It requires a local team that understands local infrastructure. UniPerks is that team, and they're moving fast.
Why we're getting involved
We invested because we saw three things:
A real market, underserved in our region. The student discount and student marketing model is proven globally - UNiDAYS alone is a $73M revenue business. But CEE has been left behind. There is no technology platform in the region that can verify students at scale and connect them with brands. UniPerks is the first mover, and in marketplace businesses, the first mover with network effects has a structural advantage.
A product that's already working. This isn't a pitch deck with projections. Tens of thousands of verified students on the platform. Around 80 brand partnerships live. Revenue growing rapidly month over month, with clear commercial traction from both direct brand deals and affiliate networks. The verification technology is connected to 95% of Polish universities, and the user base keeps scaling. The product-market fit signal is there.
A team that went to market before going to investors. Andrzej Gryko (CEO) and Konrad Celer (COO) are both University of Edinburgh alumni who experienced UNiDAYS firsthand as students in the UK - and realized nothing like it existed in Poland. They didn't start with a pitch; they started with a product. Andrzej brings experience from XTB and the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Konrad worked at Microsoft and interned at the US Congress. Karol Kocur (CTO), a senior developer from Asseco, built the technology backbone. They recently brought on Jakub Gruber as CMO - a marketing veteran with 15 years of experience including roles at Publicis Groupe and Google. This is a team that combines understanding of the user (they were the user), B2B sales capability, and technical depth.
What's next
UniPerks starts from Poland, but the playbook is designed for the region. The team is already preparing expansion into other CEE markets - where the same gap exists and no local player has filled it.
The bigger ambition is to evolve from a discount marketplace into a full student identity and benefits infrastructure. Verification, data, marketing - all in one platform. The foundation is already there: a verified user base, brand relationships, and technology that works. Now it's about scaling it across borders.
If you're building something that solves a real, structural problem in a market where nobody else has bothered to build the technology - we want to hear from you.
