Paris as the launch location for performance electric-motor bikes is as chic a statement of style as it gets. On 16 June, Ultraviolette, the Bengaluru-based electric two-wheeler (e2W) maker, entered the European market with two bike models. This entry came after a year-long certification process.
The founders of this nine-year-old company
In venture investing, where most VCs look to catch a tidal wave so that their boat goes faster, Rajaram and Arjun Rao, the two co-founders of Speciale Invest, like to paddle their own canoe. Backing nuclear fusion, a city in space, and building bespoke humanoid robots may seem like a hobbyist’s gig, but the eight-year-old VC firm is closing its third fund. It won’t be big but will certainly be bigger than its second $40 million fund.
With a family business in pharmaceuticals, Rajaram was close to science, manufacturing, and entrepreneurship growing up, but he chose to study finance to be able to “get deeply involved in it”. As luck would have it, after his B-school, he had to return to the family business to steady the ship. He eventually managed to sell it—he calls himself “lucky” on that—but the entrepreneurial bug surfaced after he had spent a decade at the VC firm Venture East and itched to take a “risk”.
Even though the venture world at large lives by a playbook, Rajaram believes deep-tech funding has “no playbook”. But timing has an outsized role in this business, and he seems to be catching a teeny tidal wave there.
Edited excerpts:
The Ken: So far you’ve done only deep-tech early-stage investments. What’s the appeal and the approach?
We want to do zero-to-one. Because we like ambiguity, we like the ability to add value at a very early stage. Once companies have grown, they don’t necessarily need a whole lot of support.
