Ultraviolette Automotive closed its best quarter yet. Between April and June this year, the Bengaluru-based electric motorcycle maker sold over 1,500 vehicles, up from around 300 in the same period last year. That is an increase 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 headed. Ultraviolette claims to have acquired the market share of the mid-size motorcycle brand in India, and is running neck-and-neck with another mid-size brand, albeit using a fraction of their retail network. “Ultraviolette today has 40 stores. Even with that distribution, we have won the (competitor’s) business,” Rajmohan said. In another competition, that claim was put to the test. “We’re kind of in the same ballpark as (their) business too,” Subramaniam said. He said the company sold about 650 vehicles in June alone from those 40 stores. It should be noted that these figures are estimates for Ultraviolette in the market.The company’s X47 crossover motorcycle is a must for this development. Rajmohan said pricing the X47 closer to comparable petrol bikes, rather than paying for it, was a deliberate move, and the company cut 40 percent of its four- to five-quarter growth. Within the Ultraviolette line, the X47 makes up about 85 percent of sales, with the F77 accounting for the rest.Growth is not limited to big cities. Subramaniam said bookings are roughly split between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, which he linked to the early rise of electric scooters that are creating huge awareness. “When the scooter segment is established, people will start moving to other categories of performance motorcycles,” he said. He also cited the company’s battery warranty, extended up to eight years or eight lakh kms, as a winning feature for buyers outside the metro.Speaking on Delhi’s EV Policy 2.0, approved by the Delhi cabinet and effective from July 1, 2026. It will stop registering new petrol and CNG two-wheelers in the capital from April 1, 2028, although vehicles already on the road are not affected. Subramaniam called the plan an opportunity and said Ultraviolette did not set out to be just a luxury motorcycle manufacturer. The other two products, Tesseract and Shockwave, are coming at more affordable prices. “Our vision has always been electric on a large scale, it’s not going to be scooters or motorcycles, it’s going to be everything,” he said, adding the goal is to sell four to five cars a year by 2030.When asked about established players entering the electric motorcycle segment, Subramaniam welcomed the competition. “It is a sign that the sector will now begin to grow rapidly,” he said. Rajmohan compared it to how electric scooter penetration jumped from less than 1 percent to nearly 15 percent when major manufacturers entered the market.The founders also expressed widespread consumer confusion over the government’s push for ethanol blending. Rajmohan added that this uncertainty, ironically, favors EVs, since electric vehicles offer “one side, which is very direct and easy to buy.”
