In this conversation, Ritu walks through the path that led her to Zūm: from growing up in India as the oldest of four children, to studying computer engineering as one of six women in a class of 300 at Delhi Institute of Technology, to building products at Oracle, Yahoo, and eBay. It was at eBay, watching colleagues leave early to pick up their kids while her own arrangements kept falling through, that she had the insight that would become Zūm. She left eBay to attend the Stanford Graduate School of Business where she incubated a direct-to-parent rideshare for working families, which later became a full-service school district platform modernizing and electrifying the yellow school bus. She also speaks about her passion for the problem, what it meant to build this company for herself, her mother, all working parents, and why she believes being an underdog is not a disadvantage, but a super power.
Ritu Narayan is the founder and CEO of Zūm, a technology company modernizing and electrifying school transportation and the energy grid. Ritu brings over 20 years of experience as a tech industry leader before starting Zūm, leading teams at eBay, Oracle, Yahoo, and IBM. Ritu earned her undergraduate degree in computer science at the Delhi Institute of Technology and a master’s degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She lives in California, with her husband and two children, both of whom commuted to school safely, reliably, and sustainably thanks to Zūm.
“We had a very clear line of sight that the school bus is the best asset to be electrified because it's a very large battery on wheels. It's almost three to six times as large as a Tesla battery.”

