Two months in the past, Indian electrical bike startup Ultraviolette expanded into 10 Ecu nations. Now, fueled with $21 million in an all-equity spherical led via the company project arm of Jap electronics massive TDK Company, Ultraviolette is striking its growth plans into overdrive.
The nine-year-old startup plans to develop its Ecu footprint fourfold, input different motorcycle-driven markets corresponding to Latin The usa and Southeast Asia, and building up its portfolio to fourteen fashions via early 2027. Ultraviolette’s international growth follows the 2024 release of its F77 Mach 2 flagship style and its 2d product, the F77 SuperStreet, in February.
In the back of Ultraviolette are two formative years buddies — CEO Narayan Subramaniam and CTO Niraj Rajmohan — who mixed their experience in mechanical engineering, car design, laptop science, and electronics to affect the mid-segment two-wheeler marketplace.
The duo, which drew inspiration from Tesla, began Ultraviolette at a time when India’s electrical two-wheeler marketplace used to be ruled via low-speed fashions, principally catering to industrial and application wishes. The early growth used to be pushed via Chinese language imports providing cheap choices, adopted via a wave of homegrown startups and, extra not too long ago, legacy producers getting into the distance.
As an alternative of changing into simply every other participant in that race, the Ultraviolette co-founders got down to construct electrical bikes that might fit the efficiency of 150cc to 800cc interior combustion engine sports activities motorcycles.
“We requested ourselves, if we need to make electrical thrilling in two-wheelers, what wouldn’t it take? And that’s the target with which we began,” mentioned Rajmohan (pictured above, proper) in an unique interview.
The Bengaluru-based startup took about 4 years from its inception in 2016 to unveil the primary style in 2019. The startup went via a couple of design iterations prior to finalizing the 7th model — therefore the title F77. The industrial model debuted with a hard and fast battery pack to ship over 186 miles of vary and a most sensible velocity of 96 miles/hour with a 30kW top energy and as much as 100 newton-meters of torque.
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Ultraviolette has additionally unveiled the light-weight Surprise Wave bike in addition to the Tesseract scooter, which options entrance and rear radars and cameras to permit an assisted-driving enjoy and blindspot detection. The scooter prices â‚ą120,000 ($1,370), whilst its bikes (ex-showroom) have a base fee of â‚ą175,000 ($2,000) and is going as much as $10,000.
Ultraviolette’s automobiles come supplied with eSIM connectivity and have predictive upkeep powered via a proprietary diagnostics gadget. Rajmohan mentioned the gadget can hit upon even minor problems, corresponding to when the chain wishes lubrication. The startup gives an app that gives a majority of these insights to shoppers at the cross.
The corporate has additionally established a producing and meeting facility in Bengaluru’s Electronics Town, with a capability of 30,000 devices. These days, the corporate handles the whole lot in-house from growing embedded device and battery control programs to motor controllers or even battery production. About 500 folks paintings at Ultraviolette, together with 200 in company purposes and R&D.
Ultraviolette’s industry style used to be formed partially via Tesla house owners. The co-founders hung out speaking to Tesla house owners within the U.S., who had been some of the first ones to shop for the Fashion S in 2015, to be informed what made the that automobile other from different EVs of its time.
“Those Tesla vehicles had been very particular, as proudly owning them used to be observed as revolutionary. It used to be extra of a way of life remark,” Rajmohan informed TechCrunch.
The co-founders introduced that sentiment to Ultraviolette’s design and branding, aiming to make it a world corporate from day one. As Rajmohan defined, the phrase “violet” is pronounced in a similar fashion in over 30 Ecu languages, whilst “extremely” alerts one thing state-of-the-art. Reinforcing that ambition, the startup pursued Ecu certification for all its automobiles even prior to getting into the marketplace.
That is in contrast to different Indian electrical two-wheeler producers, that have attempted to cater to native call for. India accounts for just about 40% of worldwide bike gross sales — even if maximum of the ones are powered via interior combustion engines.
Increasing past India makes strategic sense for Ultraviolette, given the home EV marketplace stays rather underpenetrated — with adoption at simply 7.66%, in comparison to the worldwide reasonable of 16.48%, in line with a fresh document via government-backed suppose tank NITI Aayog. Whilst India objectives to succeed in 30% EV penetration via 2030, growth to this point means that it can be an bold goal.
India could also be a price-sensitive marketplace, the place two-wheelers are most often now not discretionary purchases, however very important and reasonably priced modes of day by day transportation. Consequently, promoting high-end variants at scale within the nation generally is a problem for Ultraviolette — a minimum of to begin with.
“We had been very transparent that what we’re doing is, we’re operating towards segments which might be extra common in nature,” Rajmohan mentioned.
What’s subsequent?
Ultraviolette plans to enlarge the capability of its Bengaluru manufacturing facility to as much as 60,000 devices and upload a bigger location to scale to about 300,000 devices via early subsequent yr. Ultraviolette operates 20 retail outlets throughout 20 Indian towns and plans to develop to round 100 via March subsequent yr. About 50 of the ones retail outlets — one according to town — are anticipated to open via the festive season later this yr.
Rajmohan informed TechCrunch the startup is operating on increasing its Ecu presence, the place it has 40 sellers.
“Subsequent yr is the place the scale-up occurs in Europe,” he mentioned.
The startup additionally plans to begin its pilot in Latin The usa and Southeast Asia subsequent yr and cross to markets together with the U.S. and Japan later.
Ultraviolette has bought greater than 3,000 bikes in India and has projected to promote as much as 10,000 later this yr. It has additionally focused over $50 million in income via the tip of this monetary yr. To this point, it has raised round $75 million in investment and counts Qualcomm Ventures, Exor, and TVS Motor amongst its different key traders.
