Ritu Narayan

Ritu Narayan, the founder and CEO of Zum, is on a mission to solve an enormous environmental and societal problem that’s been hiding in plain sight: the inefficient, inequitable $28 billion U.S. student transportation system. A 15+ year tech industry veteran (eBay, Oracle, Yahoo, IBM), Narayan, as a parent, realized the diesel-based yellow school bus system hadn’t changed in decades. Narayan founded Zum in 2014, initially envisioning it as a ride-sharing service for kids. In 2021, she led Zum’s transformation into a far more ambitious company, dedicated to modernizing student transportation with tech-driven solutions like cloud-based routing platforms to decrease commute times and costs and grid-powering electric vehicles. Zum has raised $200M with notable investors like Softbank and Sequoia and continues to rapidly expand market share in school districts, including the nation’s second largest school district, Los Angeles Unified School District, and San Francisco Unified School District. A graduate of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, she earned her undergraduate degree in computer science at the Delhi Institute of Technology.