Ultraviolette Automotive recently closed its best quarter ever. Between April and June this year, the Bengaluru-based electric motorcycle maker sold over 1,500 vehicles, up from around 300 in the same quarter last year. That’s an increase of more than 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 it has surpassed the average sales of a rival premium motorcycle brand in India, and is neck-and-neck with the mid-range of another, despite operating a fraction of its dealer networks. “Ultraviolette today has 40 stores. Even with that distribution, we exceeded the sales (of that rival),” said Rajmohan. In the other rival, the claim was more measured. “We are in the same ballpark as (its) sales as well,” said Subramaniam. He added that the company sold about 650 vehicles in June from those 40 stores alone. It should be noted that these figures are the proper reading of the Ultraviolet market.The company’s X47 crossover motorcycle is central to this growth. Rajmohan said pricing the X47 close to comparable petrol bikes, rather than a premium one, was deliberate, and the company has recorded more than 40 per cent quarterly growth for four to five quarters running. In Ultraviolet’s own line, the X47 makes up nearly 85 percent of sales, with the F77 accounting for the rest.Growth is not limited to big cities. Subramaniam said bookings are split almost equally between Tier 1 and Tier 2 cities, a trend he linked to the earlier rise of electric scooters creating wider awareness. “The moment a scooter segment is established, people start moving towards some more performance-oriented motorcycle segments,” he said. He also pointed to the company’s battery warranty, extendable up to eight years or eight lakh kms, as a factor that wins buyers over.Talking about Delhi’s EV 2.0 Policy, approved by the Delhi cabinet and effective from July 1, 2026. It will stop registration of new petrol and CNG bikes 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 intended to remain just a premium motorcycle manufacturer. Two other products, the Tesseract and Shockwave, come at more affordable prices. “Our view has always been electric at scale will not be scooters or motorcycles, it will be both,” he said, adding a sales target of four to five lakh vehicles per 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 begin to grow rapidly,” he said. Rajmohan compared it to how electric scooter penetration jumped from less than 1 percent to nearly 15 percent once serious manufacturers entered that market.The founders also described widespread buyer confusion over the government’s push to blend ethanol. Rajmohan added that this uncertainty, paradoxically, favors the EV, since the electric offers “a side, which is very, very simple and easy to buy”.
