Transforming Student Transportation in the US With AI & EVs - Zūm Founder and CEO, Ritu Narayan

Zūm was founded in 2015 by Ritu Narayan to provide rides for children to and from school and activities. By 2021 it had transformed into a company with even greater ambitions, dedicated to solving the environmental and societal challenges of the US student transportation system. 

It recently announced a $140 million Series E funding round, bringing its valuation to $1.3 billion.

"I originally created Zūm as an 'uber for kids' to solve this problem for parents. But it was in the course of promoting this service to schools that I realized that the problem was much larger," Narayan tells Auto Futures.

Student transportation is the largest mass transit system in the US, yet no one had tried to change it over 80 years. School districts were largely outsourcing their transportation services, so the industry was ripe for change, she says.

Zūm now works with more than 4,000 schools, with contracts across significant school districts nationwide, including states such as California, Washington, Illinois, Texas, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, Virginia, and many more. 

"Zūm has unified 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, efficiency and sustainability for the school districts," explains Narayan.

At present 90% of school buses in the US run on diesel. The company plans to transition its fleet to 100% electric buses. It's also developing a Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) service.

"Optimizing routes substantially cuts down mileage and reduces emissions; Zum’s proprietary Vehicle-to-Grid technology revolutionizes how EV energy gets stored and distributed. Turns parking lots into virtual power plants."

Creating Virtual Power Plants

Zūm's AI-driven platform enables immediate and transformational efficiencies for schools and school districts.

"Zūm’s technology platform captures and delivers a level of data the industry has never seen before. Currently, school transportation is antiquated with one bus fits all approach, very little technology, data, and transparency making the system highly inefficient and inflexible for all stakeholders," says Narayan.

The data is used to optimise routes for the shortest travel time and the lowest cost for high capacity vehicles, such as school buses. The data can also predict how many children are on any given route.

"Zūm’s platform keeps an accurate track of ridership, evaluating trends on who is riding and not riding. School transportation has this typical issue of subscribers vs actual riders. To recommend ridership based trends and analysis to school districts allows them to optimize both the number of vehicles on the road but also offer transportation to students who need it more regularly than others," she says,

It is also a key tool in the company's efforts to fully decarbonise the school bus industry.

"When combined with the deployment of its fully EV school bus fleets, Zūm will be able to turn the largest battery on wheels – batteries 4-6 times the size of EV car batteries – into virtual power plants through its advances in Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology. With Zum’s advanced technology platform it now has the ability to know when to discharge and recharge EV school buses. For the first time ever, school buses that would otherwise be sitting idle in bus depots can now be put to work during evenings and summers and send energy back to the grid." 

"Zūm’s shift to EV fleets, and its use of V2G charging, will improve both health and environmental outcomes for the school districts and communities that Zūm serves, ultimately bolstering the fight against climate change," she adds.

A Greener Future

At the start of 2024 Zūm announced its new round of funding. In total it's raised $350 million.The company's existing investors include Sequoia and SoftBank Vision.

"This new capital will be used to galvanize our growth across the nation; accelerate the transition of our multi-sized fleet to electric; and ramp up the deployment of our cutting-edge AI driven technology to fully decarbonize the school bus industry and bolster the fight against climate change." says Narayan.

Zūm continues to work with districts, bus manufacturers, battery manufacturers, investors, policy makers and technology partners in the EV ecosystem to advance the acceleration to electric school buses.

"We will not stop until all children have access to safe, reliable and sustainable transportation."

Finally, we asked Narayan what green mobility in the US will look like by 2030.

"The time for change is now. Zūm is leading the transformation of student transportation into the green era. By 2030, Zum will be operating a fully electric fleet, powering the grid at scale creating healthier commutes and communities for the families that we serve," she predicts.

"It is important that we look at the entire ecosystem from micromobility to mass transit, so that all consumers have access to sustainable transportation. And public and private collaboration will be critical to accelerate implementation," concludes Narayan.