Ultraviolette Automotive recently closed its best quarter to date. Between April and June this year, the Bengaluru-based electric motorcycle maker sold more than 1,500 vehicles, up from around 300 in the same quarter last year. That’s a growth of over 400 percent.The company’s co-founders, CEO Narayan Subramaniam and CTO Niraj Rajmohan, spoke to TOI Auto about the quarter and where the company is at. Ultraviolette claims to have overtaken the mid-size sales of one rival premium motorcycle brand in India, and is in the race with another mid-size model, despite having a share of its dealer network. “Ultraviolette has 40 shops today. Even with that distribution, we surpassed (that rival’s) sales,” Rajmohan said. As for another rival, the claim was more measured. “We’re kind of on par with (their) sales,” Subramaniam said. He added that in June alone, the company sold around 650 vehicles from those 40 stores. It should be noted that these figures are Ultraviolette’s own reading of the market.The company’s X47 crossover motorcycle is key to this growth. Rajmohan said pricing the X47 close to comparable petrol bikes, rather than premium, was deliberate, and the company has seen growth of over 40 per cent quarter-on-quarter for four to five quarters in a row. Within Ultraviolette’s own line, the X47 accounts for close to 85 percent of sales, with the F77 accounting for the remainder.Growth is not limited to big cities. Subramaniam said bookings were almost evenly split between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, a trend he linked to the earlier rise of electric scooters raising wider awareness. “The moment the scooter segment is established, people start to move towards some of the more performance-oriented segments of motorcycles,” he said. He also pointed to the company’s warranty on the batteries, which can be extended up to eight years or eight lakh kilometers, as a factor that is winning over customers outside the metros.Talking about the Delhi EV Policy 2.0, approved by the Delhi government and effective from July 1, 2026. It will stop the registration of new petrol and CNG two-wheelers in the capital from April 1, 2028, though vehicles already on the road are not affected. Subramaniam called the policy an opportunity and said that Ultraviolette never planned to remain just a premium motorcycle manufacturer. Two more products, Tesseract and Shockwave, come at more affordable prices. “Our position has always been electric on a large scale, it’s not going to be scooters or motorcycles, it’s going to be both,” he said, adding a sales target of four to five million vehicles a year by 2030.Asked about established players entering the electric motorcycle segment, Subramaniam welcomed the competition. “It’s a sign that the segment will now start growing rapidly,” he said. Rajmohan compared this to how electric scooter penetration jumped from less than 1 percent to nearly 15 percent when serious manufacturers entered the market.The founders also described widespread customer confusion over the government’s push for ethanol blending. Rajmohan added that this uncertainty, paradoxically, works in favor of electric vehicles, since electric offers “one side, which is very, very simple and easy to buy.”
