Ritu Narayan

How a Working Mom Revolutionized School Bus Service

Ritu Narayan was a longtime tech product manager at companies like eBay and Oracle, but the mother of two kept running into a recurring problem: Her kids’ school bus was notoriously unreliable. So in 2015 she left her job to create Zūm, which began by offering a fleet of private drivers for families and grew into an AI-backed electric school bus service with more than $1.2 billion worth of contracts at thousands of schools across 14 states. Not only is the company replacing high-polluting diesel fuel school buses with an increasingly electric fleet, its technology helps school districts determine the best routes and deliver real-time updates to parents. Most importantly, Zūm has solved Narayan’s original dilemma: 98% of the service’s six million rides to date have arrived on time. That consistency paid off handsomely in 2024, when Zūm raised $140 million and hit unicorn status at a $1.3 billion valuation.

By Audrey Goodson Kingo