On 23 September, Ultraviolette announced it had raised $85 million, led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures, with Lip-Bu Tan in the round. Yes, that Lip-Bu Tan. Chairman of Walden International and, since March 2025, chief executive of Intel. The money goes into more F77s and X-47s, the Tesseract scooter, the Shockwave enduro, new platforms from 48V to 400V, and a US entry targeted for 2027. Big names, big number, big map. And not one word on which motorcycle America actually gets.
Ultraviolette’s Bengaluru plant can already build 30,000 vehicles a year, and it is being expanded to 50,000. Its best month so far was 694 bikes in July, going by Vahan numbers reported by Autocar Professional, and Autocar India put its lifetime total at 3,799 by May.
Which means the plant it already has is running at a fraction of what it can do. Now add the new factory at Hosur, 2.5 lakh units a year in its first phase, 3 lakh across both sites by mid-2027. You don’t build that for a premium electric motorcycle. You build it for the Tesseract.
Some of today’s coverage talks about 500,000 units a year. As far as I can tell, that is the size the Hosur site is designed to grow into, not what is being built now. Big, yes. Later, mind you.
That said, this is not a silly plan. Scooters are where the volume lives, volume pays for platforms, and a 48V-to-400V spread lets one company build a commuter and an enduro off shared hardware. The CTO, Niraj Rajmohan, put the export ambition plainly: “Today, our international sales account for around 15 per cent of our overall volumes, and we expect that contribution to move towards 25 per cent.” Ambitious. Not mad.
America has been given a year, not a bike
Here’s the thing about that US date. Search for this story and page one is funding, investors and 2027. No model. No price. No month. The announcement doesn’t name one either. For a rider in the US, “2027” is a line in a press release, not something he can sit on at a dealer, right?
Meanwhile, at home, we at SBW have been reading what owners are saying, and almost nobody complains about how these bikes ride. They complain about service and reach. One X-47 owner in Navi Mumbai logged traction control and ABS warnings, regen dropping out and power cutting, all inside six days and under 1,000 km. Another would-be buyer’s nearest showroom is about 250 km away. I remember collecting my Simple One from the one showroom in Bengaluru and noticing exactly that. One showroom. For a city that size.
So here is what I’d do with $85 million, Ultraviolette. Build the factory, by all means. But build the service bays first, and name the bike for America before you name the year. A 3 lakh-unit plant is a promise to strangers. A working service point is a promise to people who have already paid.
Keep that one first.
