REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – Today modern student transportation company Zūm announced that Ritu Narayan, CEO and founder has been named to the 2024 CNBC Changemakers: Women Transforming Business list.
Narayan founded Zūm to fix student transportation and ensure millions of working families didn’t have to choose between work and caring for their kids. Today, Zum is the leader in modern student transportation and has ushered in a new era of increased safety, reliability, and sustainability.
“I am honored to be part of CNBC’s Changemakers list alongside a talented and diverse group of women who are making an impact through their innovation,” Narayan said. “I started Zum because I wanted to improve the nation’s largest mass transit system for all families, drivers and school districts across the U.S. By working together, we are moving the industry forward.”
CNBC Changemakers: Women Transforming Business, an annual list, recognizes female leaders at companies or philanthropic organizations that have crossed meaningful financial milestones and achieved significant business results within the past year.
Zum unifies parents, students, school administrators, and drivers on a single personalized end to end technology platform, enabling never-before achieved levels of visibility and data-backed accountability, which has ushered in a new era of increased safety, reliability, and sustainability for the school districts.
Thousands of schools across the country have partnered with Zum for school transportation, including Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest district in the country; San Francisco Unified School District; Seattle Public Schools; Howard County Public Schools; Oakland Unified School District; and Metro Nashville Public Schools.
To learn more about how Zum is working with thousands of schools across the nation to deliver safe, reliable, zero-emission, and modern student transportation, please visit Zum’s website.
About Ritu Narayan:
Ritu Narayan is the founder and CEO of Zum, a technology company modernizing and decarbonizing school transportation and the energy grid. Accelerating its growth, Zum recently announced $140M in funding led by GIC, with additional investment from return investors like Sequoia and Softbank, bringing Zum’s total fundraise to $350 million.
An accomplished entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience as a tech industry leader, Narayan has been named one of Goldman Sach’s Exceptional Entrepreneurs, Inc.’s Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur’s 100 Women of Influence, and received the 2023 Power of Women Award from GSV ASU, among other awards and accolades.
Before starting Zum, Narayan led teams at eBay, Oracle, Yahoo, and IBM. A graduate of the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Narayan earned her undergraduate degree in computer science at the Delhi Institute of Technology. She lives in California, USA with her husband and two children, both of whom commuted to school safely, reliably, and sustainably thanks to Zum.
About Zum:
Zum has reimagined student transportation, the nation’s largest mass transit system, and developed sustainable ways to charge the grid. Zum’s robust operations and integrated end-to-end cloud-based platform provides a modern student transportation service for school districts purpose-built around the needs of kids and the expectations of modern families. Zum provides one seamless, real-time interface for parents, drivers, schools, districts, administrators, and operators to transport children safely and with increased visibility and personalized care. Always investing in the wellbeing of communities, Zum is also the only carbon neutral student transportation provider in the nation with plans to go Net Zero with its transition to EV electric buses. Zum is available nationwide, serving more than 4,000 schools across the U.S. Learn more at www.ridezum.com.
