This pivot helped a mom-turned-founder scale modern student transit - and transform lives for moms and kids

World Economic Forum

As a busy mom working in tech, Ritu Narayan understood the chaos school logistics can bring to kids and parents. Her personal experience inspired her to found Zum, a startup providing an end-to-end solution for districts with optimized bus routes, one including bus fleets to match different-sized schools, and an approach that makes school transit transparent and efficient for the first time in a century. The startup was launched originally as an on-demand service and she shares the key questions that helped her pivot the company for scale -- questions that can help any founder make a big shift happen. She also discusses the unexpected impact family logistics can have on parents (such unpredictability can nudge some moms out of the workforce altogether) and how tackling that can boost opportunity for parents and kids alike. This episode was recorded at the World Economic Forum's Urban Transformation Summit in Detroit in October 2023.