This story is part of CNBC Make It’s The Moment series, where highly successful people reveal the critical moment that changed the trajectory of their lives and careers, discussing what drove them to make the leap into the unknown.
Sometimes, the ride to school for Ritu Narayan’s children arrived on time. Sometimes it didn’t.
Whenever her kids’ transportation plans fell through, the longtime tech product manager at companies like eBay and Oracle had to enter crisis mode and drop everything at work. She thought of her own mother, a former teacher in India who faced the same problem decades ago — and ultimately put her career aside to raise four children.
Narayan’s solution: She left her job to create Zum, an AI-backed electric school bus service that launched in 2015. It started as something of a self-funded Uber, chauffeuring kids to school with a fleet of vetted private drivers. Parents arranged rides ahead of time and tracked their child’s location through Zum’s app.
It caught on quickly with Bay Area parents. “The demand was super clear,” Narayan, 50, tells CNBC Make It.
Then, in 2019, she asked some local schools to promote Zum to parents. Instead, the schools offered to enlist Zum as a privatized school bus fleet, with electric vehicles and tracking abilities.
Narayan faced a turning point: Stick with her original vision, inspired by her mother, with its clear market and high demand? Or completely revamp Zum’s services and infrastructure, while jumping straight into competition with larger established bus companies?
The customer base would be larger — more than 25 million U.S. students rely on school buses. But chasing them could collapse her company.
She took the risk. Five years later, Zum is valued at $1.3 billion, and Narayan was named to the inaugural CNBC Changemakers list on Wednesday. The startup has more than $1.5 billion worth of contracts in place with over 4,000 private and public schools across California, Washington, Texas, Illinois, Tennessee…
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