Inside Ultraviolette's Tryst With Fast E-bikes

The startup has built India's most expensive export motorcycle. Now what?

- T. Surendar

Tucked away in a dusty small bylane, in an industrial area outside Bengaluru, a dozen crates get ready for shipment. The crates, which will be put in a container and sent to Germany, contain electric motorcycles made in one large shed that doubles up as a factory.

The motorcycles are no pushovers. Even at their introductory price of £8,499 in the UK, they will be the most expensive Indian two-wheeler export. They will sport fit, finish and safety standards exacting regulations in western European markets.

The specifications—like engine power, top speed and distance travelled per charge of battery (range)—are expected to be comparable to global competitors like Harley Davidson and Zero Motorcycles. However, when it goes on sale next month, European consumers will find the price tag to be significantly lower.

For Ultraviolette Automotive, a startup founded in 2015 by two engineering college batchmates, Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan, it would be the moment of reckoning. While its competitors decided to make mass-market scooters, Ultraviolette chose the harder path—a street electric motorcycle, which in the automotive world is considered a hard engineering problem.

Many argued that it would be impossible to build a motorcycle with a large and heavy battery for long range; it could heat up at high speeds and compromise stability. But Ultraviolette managed to put it all together in its F77 model. The company has already sold 1,500 of them in India since its domestic launch in March 2023.

Mukul Ingle from Pune bought a F77 in February 2024 and rode 16,500 km on it thus far. "My Pune biking club has over 500 members riding mostly premium combustion engine motorcycles. My respect for the F77 is only growing. Most can't believe that my motorcycle hasn't had a glitch so far and that I have saved at least ₹50,000 in fuel costs," he says.