TVS-backed Ultraviolette eyes exports to US, Europe

Backed by Qualcomm Ventures, Southern super star Dulquer Salman and SaaS unicorn Zoho, the startup is raising its Series-D round at a valuation of $300 million, while nurturing its international ambitions.

“The investors are aligned with our plan to go international. They love the tech and believe we are designed to meet international standards,” said Narayan Subramaniam, chief executive and co-founder of the company.

Bangalore-based Ultraviolette launched its maiden electric motorcycle, F77, at a starting price of ₹3.8 lakh ex-showroom for the primary — base variant, and the flagship limited-edition is priced at ₹5.5 lakh. The F77 Recon, the top-end variant for mass markets will be priced at ₹4.55 lakh ex-showroom.

Equipped with a 10.3-kWh battery for the top-end model, the startup claims to offer the longest range for any electric two-wheeler in India at over 300 km on a single charge.

The e-motorcycle maker is focussing first on catering to the domestic market from January 2023 and plans to open 10 experience zones in major cities through the year, founders Niraj Rajmohan and Subramanium said in an interview.

While the first centre will be opened in Bangalore by January, it is also looking to set up a service network before working on establishing its own service centres. “We are looking at cities as zones in the country. One city represents a zone. While we need a physical presence, we also need to rethink whether we need the network density a typical OEM offers,” Subramanium said

Most prospective customers now discover and stay with the brand journey online, but the experiential element is created by the brand offline, he added.

Ultraviolette has a few thousand pre-orders for the motorcycles, but did not reveal the exact numbers. The high price tag on the motorcycles is justified by the technological innovations in the product, and is a valuable draw for customers, the founders said.

“We optimised our price for the upfront ex-showroom – this sentence is wrong. Please change it to – We are trying to optimise for a certain upfront ex-showroom price. So when we talk about a 7.1kwH pack, people will not even expect this much at the price point we have. In North America, for instance, such motorcycles start at $10,000. We wanted to make sure we meet certain ex-showroom price targets, and therefore we have lots of options on offer, like extended warranty. At this price point, the base model has twice the battery capacity of anything in the market”, Rajmohan said.

“We are offering the most advanced form of technology in this segment. If our objective was to meet a budget, then there is no innovation possible,” said Narayan.

“The next phase for the company is to set up a charging infrastructure. Our focus will be on intercity connect,” he added.

Ultraviolette is targeting a 15,000 units in its first year of production. “The plant is capable of scaling to 100,000 units annually. By our second year, we will do 50,000-60,000 in volumes, before we go up to the maximum capacity by the third year. We felt it is rational to scale up in organically to consider the volatility of supply chains, etc.,’’ Rajmohan said.