Emerging Markets Solar Fund — Launch Announcement

We are proud to announce the release of the litepaper for our new open-ended fund.

The Emerging Markets Solar Fund offers long-term returns whilst contributing to global clean energy production through the financing of solar energy infrastructure projects, which are insured and repaid through a fixed-term lease.

Global demand for energy is growing, driven by population and economic growth. Emerging markets are expected to account for 90% of energy demand growth by 2035. The rising demand creates challenges such as higher greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming. At the same time, there is an unacceptably large number of people in these economies without access to electricity. These challenges create opportunities.

Solar energy is perfectly positioned in emerging markets to solve these challenges. A lack of legacy energy infrastructure, particularly in Africa, provides a unique opportunity for renewable energy such as solar to leapfrog developed nations in renewable energy adoption. This is already happening as emerging markets account for 63% of new investments in wind and solar, overtaking both Germany and the United States. This growth is driven both in terms of need and increasing cost efficiencies.

Introducing the Emerging Market Solar Fund

The Emerging Markets Solar (“EMS”) Fund has teamed up with a launch partner, Sun Exchange, to initiate the Fund. Sun Exchange is a US-domiciled company operating out of Cape Town, South Africa and is the world’s first global, peer-to-peer, micro-leasing online marketplace for solar-cells. Sun Exchange has a strong presence in Sub-Saharan Africa, an in particular, in South Africa

The Fund provides investors with an opportunity to raise living standards in emerging markets, provide access to modern energy services, reduce global reliance on fossil fuels and offset their carbon emissions.

The primary objective of EMS is to generate stable and consistent returns for investors over the long term. The projects within the Fund are analogous to annuity products from a cash flow perspective. At the outset, there will be a capital expenditure (outflow) that will be utilized to purchase and install the solar infrastructure. The Fund will then receive monthly payments (inflows) in return. This income will escalate by a predetermined percentage each year for the next 20–25 years, bringing in an annuity income stream to the Fund, which will be reinvested in new projects. The monthly lease payments to the Fund will be facilitated via Bitcoin and converted to USD or equivalent stablecoins.

Since launching four years ago, Sun Exchange have deployed over a dozen projects with historic IRRs of between 10% to 12% (denominated in local currency). The EMS Fund intends to optimize these returns by vetting the list of prospective projects, generating returns on unallocated capital through the Invictus money market fund IML and minimizing the amount of time before lease payments begin by investing during the final phase of a crowdsale. Sun Exchange further offers tiered, volume-based incentives to members who enjoy purchase discounts and premium lease rates. By participating in the fund, investors in the Invictus EMS Fund will benefit from the highest volume tier incentives and thus earn a higher IRR than they would by investing individually.

The EMS fund levies no performance or management fees.

The first $250,000 invested into the fund during the SAFT period will receive a 3% incentive bonus up to the first $25,000 per investor. This incentive is funded by Invictus Capital and is not dilutive of other current or future investors.

The Fund will officially open for subscriptions today, in parallel with the release of the litepaper. Subscriptions will initially be accommodated via Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (“SAFT agreements”), after which automated dealing into the Fund will be facilitated via the Invictus Investor Portal. Initial token issuance and automated dealing will commence during Q1 2020.

The minimum entry for the pre-token phase via SAFT is $2 500 and this restriction will be lifted once tokens are issued, after which no minimum investment will apply. Payments will be accepted in BTC, ETH, TUSD or USDT.

For further information, please find a link to download the litepaper here.

Apply to participate in the fund before the token launch here.

Kind regards,
Nick and the Invictus Capital team