Ultraviolette's $85 Million Round: From Hosur Factories to American Roads

Posted on 24th Sep 2026 06:12:26 in Business, Digital Marketing

Tagged as: Ultraviolette, EV manufacturing, startup funding, Hosur factory, Tamil Nadu, deep tech

Ultraviolette Automotive, the Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler maker, announced on September 23 that it has raised $85 million in a Series E round co-led by the deep-tech investor Yali Capital and TDK Ventures. Lip-Bu Tan, the veteran semiconductor executive who chairs Walden International and is the chief executive of Intel, invested in the round and will join Ultraviolette as an adviser.

The larger story for Indian businesses sits in what the money is building. Two weeks before the cheque was announced, Ultraviolette unveiled plans for a Rs 779 crore factory at Hosur in Tamil Nadu, designed to roll out up to 5 lakh vehicles a year, and to take the company beyond premium motorcycles into scooters for the first time. The funding adds global investors to the cap table and pushes forward a planned 2027 entry into the United States. This is a homegrown hardware company raising global capital, building in India and selling abroad - and the factory floor it is building will depend on hundreds of smaller businesses around it.

What Ultraviolette raised, and who is writing the cheques

The $85 million Series E is led by Yali Capital, a deep-tech focused fund, and TDK Ventures, the venture arm of the Japanese electronic components major TDK. Lip-Bu Tan invested personally, and existing backers participated: Italy's Lingotto, Qualcomm Ventures, Zoho Corporation, TVS Motor Company and Speciale Invest. Earlier cheques in the same ongoing round, as The New Indian Express reported, included $21 million from TDK Ventures and $45 million from Zoho Corporation with Lingotto.

Tan's decision to join as an adviser matters for a company that competes on engineering rather than discounts. "What I really like about Ultraviolette is the combination of deep engineering expertise, strong IP, and the willingness to take on genuinely difficult problems," he said. Ultraviolette builds battery architectures spanning 48 volts to 400 volts, along with power electronics, vehicle architecture and software, in-house. It has also put radar-based safety features on a production two-wheeler - a first for the segment.

Founded in 2016 by Narayan Subramaniam and Niraj Rajmohan, Ultraviolette sells the F77 and X-47 Crossover electric motorcycles in India and 20 European countries, including Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy. The fresh capital will scale production of those models, prepare the launch of the Tesseract electric scooter and the Shockwave enduro motorcycle, fund new EV platforms, and pay for the company's entry into the United States in 2027, followed by Latin America and South-East Asia.

The founders called the round "an important step in Ultraviolette's evolution into a global electric mobility company", adding that the conviction of the new investors "reinforces our vision of building a design and tech focused global brand out of India".

The Hosur factory: Rs 779 crore and a 5 lakh-vehicle ambition

Announced on September 10, the new plant is called the BIGGA - Big Global Ambition - Factory, and it will come up at the SIPCOT Industrial Park in Shoolagiri, Hosur, close to the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. According to Moneycontrol, Ultraviolette will invest about Rs 1,000 crore to expand manufacturing across the two states: Rs 779 crore over five years for the Hosur facility and Rs 200 crore for its existing plant at Jigani in Karnataka. The Hosur site will start with an annual capacity of 2.5 lakh vehicles, with infrastructure designed to scale to 5 lakh units as demand grows.

The job numbers are where small businesses should start paying attention. Ultraviolette expects the factory to create 2,000 to 3,000 direct jobs - and, on the company's own estimate, another five to seven indirect jobs for every direct employee through suppliers and allied businesses. That multiplier is the SME story. A vehicle plant of this size does not just buy battery cells and motors; it buys fabricated metal parts, wiring harnesses, fasteners, jigs and fixtures, packaging, logistics, canteen and facility services, and a long tail of maintenance and testing work - much of it sourced from small and mid-sized units in the surrounding belt.

The facility is also a preview of the quality systems Indian suppliers will increasingly be asked to match. Ultraviolette says the factory will run on Industry 4.0 systems: a Manufacturing Execution System for production tracking and traceability, collaborative robots for sorting, welding and assembly, automated error-proofing, vision-based inspection and digital lean manufacturing, plus a dedicated test track for vehicles before dispatch. Suppliers who can plug into that digital quality chain - and hold the certifications an exporter needs - stand to win not only Ultraviolette's orders but also work from the other EV makers clustering in the Hosur-Krishnagiri belt.

Why Hosur? Narayan Subramaniam told Moneycontrol that the company wanted a location close to its Bengaluru research and development base; Hosur is roughly 90 minutes away and sits inside an established automotive supplier ecosystem with four-lane highway connectivity, skilled labour and technical training infrastructure. The Tamil Nadu government is facilitating the land allotment.

The timeline, as co-founder Niraj Rajmohan told The Times of India, is that the factory should go live in six to eight months, with full-scale production planned for July to September 2027. The demand test will be the Tesseract. The scooter launches early next year with more than 70,000 paid bookings already in hand, and Ultraviolette is targeting a production ramp of around 10,000 scooters a month. At maturity, the company expects scooters to account for about half its volumes, and it plans four motorcycle and up to three scooter platforms over the next 24 months.

Why this matters beyond one company

The round also says something about where India's venture money is willing to go. Yali Capital is a deep-tech fund; TDK Ventures is an industrial investor; and Zoho, TVS Motor and Qualcomm have stayed on the cap table across multiple rounds. "India's shift towards cleaner mobility will increasingly be driven by electric two-wheelers, given the scale of the segment," said Ganapathy Subramaniam, Founding Managing Partner of Yali Capital, explaining the bet on engineering depth over near-term volumes.

For founders, the lesson is that capital-intensive hardware built for global markets can attract patient, strategic capital - but it demands a different playbook from the consumer app era: build proprietary technology, bring industry partners onto the cap table early, and design for export quality from day one. Ultraviolette's backers now read like a supply chain in miniature. TVS Motor brings manufacturing and distribution muscle, TDK brings components, Qualcomm brings electronics and connectivity, and Zoho brings software depth.

A fair note of caution: electric two-wheelers is a capital-hungry and competitive segment, and Ultraviolette's premium positioning has kept its volumes modest so far. The Tesseract, a mainstream scooter aimed at a much wider set of riders, is the pivot that must work - and the company must now build the capacity to deliver the orders it has already booked while keeping its factory timelines.

What to watch next

• Factory progress: the Hosur plant is expected to go live within six to eight months, with full-scale production targeted for July to September 2027.
• Tesseract deliveries: more than 70,000 paid bookings are waiting, and the scooter is the company's first mainstream product.
• The United States: a 2027 market entry is planned, which would make Ultraviolette one of the few Indian two-wheeler makers selling in America.
• Supplier activity: watch for vendor onboarding, supplier park announcements and hiring in the Hosur-Krishnagiri belt - the fastest opportunities for local MSMEs.
• Follow-on capital: with $85 million in, the next question is whether the platform expansion stays on schedule.

For India's small and mid-sized manufacturers, Ultraviolette is worth watching for a simple reason: the company is attempting the hardest trick in Indian manufacturing - designing premium products at home and selling them in the world's toughest markets. If the Hosur plant delivers, the supplier network that grows around it could outlast the company's own motorcycles and scooters.

Sources

• EVreporter - Ultraviolette Raises $85 Million in Series E Funding Round
• YourStory - EV company Ultraviolette raises $85M in Series E led by deeptech fund Yali Capital
• The Times of India - Ultraviolette raises $85mn to scale up production
• Moneycontrol - Ultraviolette to invest Rs 1,000 crore in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu; Hosur plant to add 2.5 lakh capacity
• The New Indian Express - Ultraviolette raises USD 85 Million, to enter the US market in 2027
• EVreporter - Ultraviolette Announces New BIGGA Manufacturing Facility in Hosur, Tamil Nadu