REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (Diya TV) — Indian American entrepreneur Ritu Narayan, founder and CEO of student transportation technology company Zum, has been named a 2026 Bay Area winner of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year award, a recognition that highlights leaders driving innovation and growth in key industries.
The honor from Ernst & Young recognizes entrepreneurs who show vision, strong leadership, and long-term business impact. Narayan was selected from hundreds of nominees by an independent panel of judges made up of former winners, CEOs, and business leaders.
The award places Narayan among a select group of business leaders in the Bay Area who are shaping industries through innovation and purpose-driven growth.
Ritu Narayan founded Zum after facing daily school transportation challenges as a parent. She saw delays, lack of transparency, and limited coordination in student transit systems. That personal experience led her to build a company focused on modernizing student mobility through technology. What began as a simple problem-solving idea has grown into a large-scale transportation platform used across the United States.
Today, Zum supports more than 4,500 schools across 18 states. School districts use their services to improve reliability, reduce operational delays, and give families better access to real-time transportation updates.
The EY Entrepreneur Of The Year program, founded in 1986, celebrates business leaders who build high-growth companies and deliver long-term economic and social value. The program evaluates leadership, innovation, growth, and impact.
Judges selected Narayan based on her role in transforming student transportation into a more efficient and technology-driven system. Her work stood out for its focus on both operational improvement and educational access.
As a Bay Area award winner, Narayan now advances to the national stage of the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2026 program. Winners will be announced at the Strategic Growth Forum in November.
Under Narayan’s leadership, Zum developed a platform called the Connected Mobility Experience, also known as CMX. The system helps school districts manage buses, routes, and drivers in real time. The platform also improves communication between schools and families. Parents can track transportation updates, which reduces uncertainty and improves trust in the system. School districts use the technology to streamline operations. They can adjust routes faster, manage resources more efficiently, and respond to delays with greater speed.
Zum has also become a leader in electric school bus adoption. The company supports the shift toward cleaner transportation systems in partnership with school districts across the country.
One major project includes work with the San Francisco Unified School District to launch what the company describes as the nation’s largest electric school bus deployment. The project also includes a large bidirectional vehicle-to-grid fleet. This system allows buses to return stored energy to the grid when not in use. It supports both sustainability goals and energy efficiency efforts.
Narayan said the company started with a simple goal of solving a real-world problem. She credited the Zum team for building a platform that now serves millions of students through improved transportation access.
