Zum CEO and Founder Ritu Narayan Named One of 2024's Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business

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Sep 18, 2024, 06:00 ET

San Francisco Business Times Recognizes Narayan's Leadership and Impact on Modernizing Student Transportation Nationwide

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 18, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Zūm, the leader in modern school transportation, announced that Zum CEO and Founder Ritu Narayan has been named one of 2024's Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.

The San Francisco Business Times' annual awards recognize "the most powerful, inspiring and influential women" in the region. Past honorees include Fortune 500 CEOs, Nobel laureates, founders and funders, scientists, C-suite executives and others from across the Bay Area business and nonprofit community.

Today Zūm, the leader in modern school transportation, announced that Zum CEO and Founder Ritu Narayan has been named one of 2024’s Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business.

Honorees will be recognized at a gala on Oct. 10 and featured in a special edition of the San Francisco Business Times.

"It is an honor to be part of the 2024 class of Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business alongside so many inspiring and innovative leaders," said Ritu Narayan, Founder and CEO at Zum. "I founded Zum to solve the decades-long problem of student transportation. We got our start in the Bay Area with tremendous support from schools and families – and, today, Zum is leading the industry forward by delivering safe, reliable, sustainable and equitable rides in school districts nationwide."

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. Through the Zum app, parents can view a profile of their child's bus driver, along with real-time tracking and notifications about their school bus location and their child's pickup or dropoff status. Zum also allows administrators to optimize routes and provides staff with real-time data and performance reports.

In August, Zum launched the nation's first fully electrified school bus fleet in Oakland, California, that is also equipped with groundbreaking vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology, enabling the buses to return energy to the grid at scale. Additionally, this year the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean School Bus Program awarded $58 million to Zum to accelerate the electrification of its school district partners nationwide.

Zum manages and operates student transportation in 14 states and is rapidly expanding nationwide. To learn more about how Zum is working with thousands of schools across the nation to deliver safe, reliable and modern student transportation, please visit Zum's website.

San Francisco Business Times' complete list of 2024 Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business can be viewed here.

Bio: Ritu Narayan

Ritu Narayan is the founder and CEO of Zum, a technology company modernizing school transportation and the energy grid to make them both more sustainable. An accomplished entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience as a tech industry leader, Narayan was recognized on CNBC's 2024 Changemakers: Women Transforming Business list. She has been named one of the Most Exceptional Entrepreneurs of 2023 by Goldman Sachs, Inc.'s Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs, Entrepreneur's 100 Women of Influence, and she received the 2023 Power of Women Award from GSV ASU, among other accolades. Before Zum, Narayan led teams at Oracle, Yahoo, IBM and eBay. 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 with her husband and two children who, thanks to Zum, commuted to school safely, reliably and sustainably.

About Zūm

Zum is a modern transportation solution transforming school transportation, the largest mass transit system in the U.S. Today, the company provides turnkey modern transportation solutions to school districts in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Utah, and Virginia, and is expanding rapidly nationwide. Recognized globally for its innovative transportation and energy as a service platform, Zum has been featured among Fast Company's World Changing Ideas, CNBC Disruptor 50, CNBC Changemakers, World Economic Forum and Financial Times' Fastest Growing Companies. Learn more about Zum at www.ridezum.com.