Investor Letter: Fall 2021
Dear Friend of RNEF,
I wanted to take a minute to update you on the tremendous progress we have made with the Rice New Energy Fund (RNEF) and thank you for your guidance and support. Since its inception in August, the idea, pitch, and execution plan for the fund have been refined rigorously and we have been blessed to receive support from senior faculty members and industry-leading alums alike. I have summarized our latest achievements below:
On top of the $100k committed by our anchor donor, we have four new donors that have expressed interest in helping us. Our target is to have the first close done by end of March.
We have finalized our investment team, consisting of three distinct groups with 16 total members—plus the fund controller and myself.
Dr. Mallesh Pai, our lead faculty advisor, is working with the Dean of Social Sciences to support us in setting up the infrastructure for RNEF.
We have most recently added Neil Seoni (Class of 19’) as a mentor to our utility scale group. Neil previously worked in Citi’s Power and Utilities Group and is now working for a prominent renewables investor and developer, Arevon.
The Rice administration (Dr. Leebron) is supporting us by making integral referrals for fundraising.
In my first email to the newly recruited team, I expressed my hope that through RNEF they will (1) get an in-depth view of the dynamic energy transition landscape, (2) hone their financial analysis skills, and (3) connect with industry leaders to find their role in the transition. Next semester, we will focus on four main tasks: preparing vertical-specific financial models, identifying our preferred energy transition ETF for temporary cash storage, building simulator portfolios for stress testing, and producing weekly capital markets and regulatory intelligence reports to help with investment sourcing.
RNEF is a game-changing student initiative and my team and I are committed to executing well. Nothing like this—energy transition mandate, student-led fundraising, and returns going to energy sustainability—has been done before, so we will be a guiding star for others. With your support, we can make history here at Rice, and our success could be a part of your legacy. I look forward to catching up with you in the new year, happy holidays!
Best Regards,
Shikhar Verma
Managing Partner
Rice New Energy Fund
sv34@rice.edu | sv34@rice.edu
