Senior content and commerce startup The New Grey raises funding from Bluepoint Partners

Bluepoint Partners has made a seed investment in senior content and commerce startup The New Grey(더뉴그레이). The exact amount of the investment was not disclosed.

Bluepoint sees great potential for The New Grey in the ‘well aging’ market. The company has excelled in developing and delivering services for ‘active seniors’ who spend their lives caring for their physical and mental health rather than being cared for.

The New Grey is known as a ‘senior makeover project’ with leading brands such as New Balance, BMW and Kakao. Called “Changing My Dad’s Profile Picture”, the project changed the fashion of ordinary 50-60 year old men and photographed them like professional models, and received a great response.

In addition, this company runs a senior academy for active seniors to develop senior influencers such as “Ahjussis”: men who are middle-aged or older in South Korea, and is expanding this into the commercial space. We are building a value chain of content, academy, community and commerce around 700,000 senior-centric on-demand media and 300,000 senior influencer networks.

Jung-Hyun Kwon, CEO of The New Grey, studied information systems at university but became interested in senior issues and has been tapping into the senior market with Makeover since 2014. He set up a subsidiary in Japan in November last year and is also looking to expand overseas.

This investment is part of Bluepoint’s ongoing agenda to solve the demographic problem through startups. The idea is that we need startups with a demographic product market fit (DMF) perspective to discover new market opportunities in changing demographics, just as products that are needed in the market come to life.

“The New Grey is a team with differentiated planning and strong execution that has pioneered a closed-loop, senior-focused service,” said Insung Lee, senior venture capitalist at Bluepoint, who led the investment. “We expect rapid growth as it solves the ageing problem in a way that the market wants.”

Meanwhile, the domestic silver economy market is expected to grow significantly from $21billion (27.38 trillion won) in 2012 to $128 billion (168 trillion won) by 2030.