In the two years since their first product, the F77, went on sale, Bengaluru-based electric motorcycle manufacturer Ultraviolette has sold around 2,000 units. That’s not even a drop in the ocean, considering that the motorcycle market in India stood at over 12 million units for the year ended March 2025. Then again, with a starting price of over Rs 3 lakh for the entry-level F77, the limited volumes should not have surprised anyone.
Yet, Ultraviolette commands an outsized share of attention in the electric two-wheeler market. Last year they showcased the Tesseract electric scooter and, despite saying it was a couple of years away from production, attracted over 60,000 bookings. The striking design, an attractive introductory offer of Rs 1.2 lakh, and a low pre-booking amount of Rs 999 all helped. But even so, the company is tiny compared to Bengaluru-based peers like Ather Energy and Ola Electric.
And within 48 hours of bookings opening for Ultraviolette’s latest product, the X-47 Crossover, reservations had crossed the 3,000 mark. On the face of it, nothing quite explains the hype around Ultraviolette. Not the lower price of the new motorcycle—starting at Rs 2.49 lakh—but rather its sheer performance, which is on par with the F77: a 0–60 time of under three seconds, a top speed of 145 kilometers per hour, and a power output of 40 horsepower.
Possibly, it is the technology that sets Ultraviolette apart. The X-47 is the first two-wheeler in India to offer radar-enabled Advanced Rider Assistance Systems (ARAS)—the two-wheeler equivalent of ADAS in cars. Narayan Subramaniam, Co-Founder and CEO of Ultraviolette, says the company is all about technology. The ARAS system is highly advanced, not just offering collision warnings—especially when being overtaken—but also tracking vehicles approaching from the rear. If the system senses that a vehicle is coming too close, the indicators start flashing to alert the driver or rider who may be distracted. “Our system doesn’t just offer this in a narrow field, but in a wide angle, including up and down, because our roads are bumpy. We have spent a lot of time developing this technology,” Subramaniam says.
Subramaniam, along with his childhood friend and schoolmate Niraj Rajmohan, now Chief Technology Officer, founded Ultraviolette in 2016. “We believe in building from the top down, getting the difficult things right first. We nailed exhilarating performance with the F77. We developed radar for two-wheelers with the X-47. Our goal is to set global technology benchmarks and then make that technology affordable.”
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Investor confidence is high
Another area where the company has been working is reducing charging time and range anxiety. The latter was addressed with the large battery packs of the F77 and now the X-47. The 7.2 kWh pack offers a claimed range of 211 kilometres, while the larger 10.4 kWh pack offers 323 kilometres. Coupled with the low operating costs of an EV, this should increase adoption. “A hundred rupees of petrol on an equivalent motorcycle will only get you from Bengaluru Airport to the city. A hundred rupees of electricity on our motorcycle will take you from Bengaluru Airport to Chennai Airport,” Subramaniam explains. The new X-47 also features an onboard charger that can plug into any socket via an extension, plus an adaptor that allows Ultraviolette products to use Type-2 EV chargers.
So while volumes have been limited so far, investor confidence is high. That’s evident in the list of top-tier global backers: Lingotto (an investment firm indirectly owned by Italy’s Agnelli family), Qualcomm Ventures, TDK, as well as TVS Motors and Zoho Corporation, promoted by Sridhar Vembu.
Ultraviolette has already started exporting. “We just launched in France, for example. Our first two container loads sold out soon after arrival, and the third sold out while still en route,” Subramaniam says. The company isn’t competing with cheap Chinese EVs but with Italian and German manufacturers—the F77 has a starting price of €9,999 in Europe. A potential free-trade agreement with the European Union could give them a major boost.
“Their products are certainly impressive and fun to ride,” says Sirish Chandran, Editor of Evo India magazine. “It will be interesting to see how they manage to scale up manufacturing.” Subramaniam knows this challenge well, but believes the team’s mix of young engineers and industry veterans will manage it—a task that has tripped up many EV start-ups. The Tesseract, showcased in March, is still at least nine months away from launch. Ultraviolette’s current facilities cannot handle the expected demand, and a new plant will be necessary if growth holds.
A few months ago, in an interview with ThePrint, Tarun Mehta, CEO of Ather Energy, said innovation in EVs will come out of India simply due to the size of the market. And while Ather is innovating, so is Ultraviolette. The big question is: where will the company stand five years from now?
Kushan Mitra is an automotive journalist based in New Delhi. He tweets @kushanmitra. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)