Welcome to the Rally Cap Climate Roll-Up !
Welcome to the inaugural edition of The Rally Cap Climate Roll-Up — The RCCR. We’ll aim to get this out every couple of weeks, inspired by our deep dives into sub-sectors (water, solar financing, b2b EV etc.), a digest of cool climate companies we’re talking to, trends we’re tracking and beyond.
There are loads of newsletters, podcasts and communities helping investors, founders, operators and general bystanders get smart on climate VC, but we’ve found them all to be quite US-/EU-centric — so, while we invest extremely bullishly in those geos, this newsletter is meant to fill the knowledge gap across our target emerging markets of LatAm and Africa, with a sprinkling of South and Southeast Asia.
Rally Cap is a $20m emerging market fintech fund, backed by premier global fintech funds and powered by a collective of strategic operator angels.
Having spent the past 2 years identifying and investing in exceptional fintech founders across emerging markets, we’re excited to now replicate our successful model in climate. We are launching a ~$5m micro-fund guided by the following principles:
- What we believe:
— A mass convergence of top-tier talent and capital is generating a climate goldrush
— Many of the next unicorns will come from the climate and energy sector
— A collaborative approach to investing is the only way to win globally - What we don’t do:
— This is NOT an impact fund
— We are NOT chasing carbon market multiples
— We don’t fund venture educations; - What we do:
— We back exceptional teams led by experienced executives
— We anchor on enterprise-grade B2B commerciality
— We like hardware, but love software
— We invest as early as possible, across all geos
— We are all about collaborative co-investing and learning, fostering meaningful relationships with investors across our ecosystems - Our community is open to any value-add venture partners, micro LPs and strategic co-learners, who want to collaborate on deal-sourcing, due diligence and portfolio support.
— Please fill out this quick form to join the RC Climate Collective!
Cool Companies Currently Raising (we’re always happy to intro!)
LATAM:
- Solfium (Mexico) — C&I solar financing, working with Pepsi, ABB Inbev, Engie, Scotiabank and Santander and on pace to do more than $5m in revenue this year (one of our first investments)
- AInWater (Chile) — AI-powered software for water treatment plants across LatAm, partnered with the likes of Nestlé.
AFRICA:
- Wyre (Nigeria) — Energy management software, already expanding across the footprints of some of the largest banks in West Africa
- Zimi (South Africa) — Venture-built by our friends at Holocene, Zimi is building out the electric fleet infrastructure for Africa.
- Zeno Moto (Kenya) — ex-Tesla team building ground-up electric motorcycles, for individuals and fleets.
MENA:
- Graze It (Saudi Arabia) — Low-carbon/-water data-driven cattle feed, currently partnered with some of the largest regional cattle owners and dairy product companies like Danon
News, Trends and Our Take
- Gabon, which had been celebrated for its recent $500m debt-for-nature swap, made new headlines as the tiny West African nation was rocked by a coup — an increasingly common occurrence across the continents’ aging military governments.
- Zimbabwe has moved to regulate carbon market revenue, effectively halving earning potential by stipulating that 50% of all proceeds generated domestically be allocated to government coffers. This is not all that surprising, given the increasing trend of African countries seeking to grow their revenue bases by imposing digital services taxes on global consumer internet software companies or on mobile money usage. As we’ve learned time and time again, ust because it all makes for bad policy doesn’t mean that governments with painfully small tax bases won’t pursue and defend them. What happens if countries like Kenya with growing DAC and other offset markets follow suit? Certainly a dangerous commercial headwind worth tracking.
- Brazil has moved to cap its largest polluters. Given the country’s pole position in regional venture dollar flows, this is fantastic news for founders operating in the space — we envision Brazilian companies comprising a large percentage of our portfolio over the next couple of years.
- Like most climate investors and founders in the region, we’re tracking closely next year’s elections in Mexico, and what the resulting energy policies will mean for both GHG reduction targets and the blossoming climatetech ecosystem.
Asks
- I’m going deep on water & VC in the next couple of weeks — if you have any exceptional founders, investors or otherwise that you think I should talk to, please let me know!
- We’re always looking out for additional venture partners and micro-LPs to help power our Slack community — please reach out here!
- If you know any larger institutional LPs interested in gaining exposure to global climate companies, our deck is here.
If you’ll like to receive subsequent newsletters in your mail, please sign up here
PS — Our friends at CTB run a climate tech bootcamp and applications for its next cohort are now open! Please visit their site to learn more
Till the next one,
Hayden
