The startup fixing America's broken school bus system

If we learned anything from seminal '90s hip-hop group Kriss Kross, it's that missing the bus is something you never, ever want to do.

Yet, missing the bus is a real problem for students across America, thanks to a severe shortage of school bus drivers.

Rather than sit idly at the bus stop, eBay exec turned entrepreneur Ritu Narayan founded Zum, the "Uber for school buses." The $1.7B company is transforming a tangled mess of driver shortages and complicated state-by-state bus systems into a streamlined, 21st-century service to safely and efficiently transport students, per Forbes.

Get on the bus

America spends nearly $40B/year on school transportation, a hefty price for a sprawling patchwork that hasn't evolved much:

• 480k school buses provide daily transport
• 53% of students take school buses
• 26m school children ride buses 2x/day
• Buses are considered ~9x safer than passenger vehicles

While the scale is impressive, many students rely on parents, guardians, or public transit to attend school. Those numbers are increasing as schools struggle with driver shortages, budget constraints, and rising fuel prices.

Driver employment is now 9.5% lower than in 2019, and those shortages have consequences for students, parents, and educators:

• 75% of schools say transportation access affects chronic absenteeism.
• Unreliable transportation can affect academic outcomes.
  
• 35% of parents missed work, and 11% lost jobs due to school transportation needs.
• 83% of schools report that educators help cover transportation needs.

Enter Zum

Struggling with reliable transportation for her own kids, Narayan launched Liftee, a ride-sharing service with added security. But the service couldn't scale.

She pivoted to Zum, a district-wide platform that coordinates fleets of school buses faster and more efficiently than traditional models.

• Zum buys buses, which connect to an app that allows dispatchers, parents, and teachers to track routes.
• AI analyzes routes to save time, miles, and money, reducing the number of buses needed.
• It offers drivers competitive rates (starting at $30/hour) plus benefits, and utilizes electric buses, which also help shore up power grids.
• 5k schools in 18 states pay for the service.

Zum's long-term contracts appeal to investors:

• $430m in funding raised
• $333m in 2025 revenue, up 35% from 2024

While there have been hiccups, Zum has helped districts eliminate driver shortages.

For students, Zum offers reliability and air conditioning — reason alone to jump ... jump.