How Ritu Built Zum into a Billion-dollar company.

As a kid growing up in India, Ritu Narayan aspired to be an Astronaut. At this time, there was only one Astronaut in India, but this didn’t stop her from dreaming. Former Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf famously said, “If your dreams don’t scare you, they are not big enough.”

Blessed with deep intellect and a desire to solve problems around her, she worked hard with the encouragement of her mother.  A focused professional who wanted her daughter to take the world by the horns, Ritu’s mother told her she could become anything she committed herself to do.

This is the story of the focus, resilience, and business acumen of an Indian immigrant in America who set out to solve her problem and ended up helping millions of parents.

More importantly, this is a chronicle of how Ritu built Zum into a Billion-dollar company armed with an indomitable spirit and rock-solid determination.

Starting First in India

While Ritu did not become an Astronaut, her dog-like devotion to her studies led her to the prestigious New Delhi Institute of Technology. At Delhi the university accepted her to study Computer Engineering, becoming the first person in her family to do so.

The future entrepreneur, therefore, made the first giant steps for herself, entering an exclusive school with 300 students of whom only 6 were women. Above all she developed a deep love for science and technology.

After completing her studies in India with distinction, Ritu relocated to the United States where her stellar performance led her to work for Oracle, IBM, Yahoo! and eBay. It was around this time that she proceeded to her master’s degree in management from the prestigious Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Balancing Between Work and Raising her two children.

A degree with distinction in computer science and an innate ability to offer solutions to complex problems opened large doors for Ritu in America. This led her to the corridors of business power and the decision-making table of some of the world’s most iconic tech companies.

Equally important to Ritu were her children, whom she adored just like every mother. As she rose up the corporate ladder, the burdens and responsibilities of motherhood weighed so heavily on her. The duty to attend meetings with top executives collided with her responsibility to drive her children to school. And dutifully, pick them up afterward.

And this is how an idea walked through her mind that would make a dent in the school transport system in America. The seed was planted, and Ritu built Zum into a billion-dollar company.

Starting Zum, and Finding a Solution for Parental Stress

While working at eBay and both of her children started going to school, faced pressure of being required to be in two places at the same time.

The eBay executive was faced with a dilemma. How does she address the problem of her children’s school transport and at the same time meet her pressing job demands. She remembered her mother grappling with the same problem back in India.

She ran a platform on eBay where 4 million sellers were selling anything and everything to 50 million customers, a technology that worked like magic. Sales happened in minutes. But, at the household level, she couldn’t solve a very simple challenge of parenting. How to take her kids from one place to another.

She researched and gathered data to the effect that that 63 million families in America faced the same problem. Interestingly, 10 million women left their jobs to directly face this problem, choosing family over work and losing income.

Ritu was failing as a mother and business leader. As a leader and disturbed other, she spoke to several people including workmates and each had their own frustrations. Something inside her nudged her to explore a solution.

The Questions she needed answered to solve the problem of parents.

Bubbling with passion, Ritu asserted that no parent should have to choose between career and having to care for their children. Inefficiency in cost and travel for students to school was also a key consideration.

• Could safe and reliable transport be found for children?
• Could drivers be found with childcare experience?
• Could a small pool of reliable drivers be found that a family can rely on to take children to school in the morning, pick them up in the evening, and take care of them until the parents come back from work?
• Could a working system be put in place where parents can simply download an app and schedule a ride for their children?

These are the gaps she wanted to fill to take an irritating headache off the back off parents. In a nutshell, she wanted drivers who could double up as carers when called upon to do so. This could save time spent on a bus as the heavily burdened school buses took an average of 60 to 90 minutes to deliver children home.

This time had to be cut short, mothers allowed to work, and children given the care they needed until their parents were free to join them in the evening.

People connect to brands at an emotional level. And trust is a key emotion. If parents could trust her process of recruiting drivers and the services they offered, she would be in business.

How Zum Works.

Ordinarily, Zum is an on-demand ride service similar to Uber but for kids. Drivers are verified through a set of stringent rules that include a 3-year driving license and a clean background check. Additionally, the drivers must have experience, since they care for the children they pick up until their parents come back.

Finally, a car inspection is done to ensure the safety of children as they ride. To increase the sense of trust, drivers are pooled together so parents will always interact with the same 6 drivers to ensure familiarity. Zum pays the drivers a wage, and discourages tipping to ensure quality and professional care.

To give parents peace of mind, they can track the rides through GPS.

The rideshare program focuses on the things that are close to the hearts of parents;

• Trust
• Safety
• Ease of use.

Strategies for getting business off the ground.

The startup initially had no money and for close to two years didn’t even have money to run ads. It was self-funded with no money from the outside. The founder therefore approached schools asking if they would be willing to promote her. A cold call, therefore, to a school principal miraculously led to a $35 billion market nobody was attacking using technology and that was stuck in a 70-year-old infrastructure.

One thing led to another and that’s how she was able to sign multi-year contracts with schools that led to a three times growth trajectory.

Zum’s Achievements after two years of operations

Zum provides parents with freedom, choice, and opportunity. And because of this, it has achieved phenomenal success beginning just two years after it was launched.

• In 2 years after the start of the company in 2014, the acceptance rate went up and revenue went up ten times.
• The initial startup team increased 12 times.
• Received $71 million in venture capital financing from Silicon Valley.
• Driven children 5 million miles.
• Saved California schools $15 million.
• Saved parents 100 years of their time that they otherwise would have been spent on the road.
• Secured funding from Sequoia capital that made her take the big leap.

Currently, Zum serves over 4000 schools in five States, namely California, Washington State, Maryland, Tennessee, Chicago and Texas with revenue running into billions.

Lessons in Business and famous quotes from Zum Founder Ruti Narayan.

• Three lessons she learned in her journey are passion, perseverance, and people. She equated these three to physics. Passion is like inertia; perseverance is like momentum and people are like a catalyst.
• The success of a start-up depends on the team you set up. Getting your team right is both an art and a science.
• Passion in business is not giving up even when success is delayed and continuing on your path even if you don’t see success.
• Never give up even if it is completely uncomfortable.
• The number one reason why startups fail is people issues.

Conclusion on How Ritu Grew Zum into a Billion-dollar Company.

In conclusion, Rita Narayan’s journey exemplifies the ability to identify hidden problems and respond to the challenges of this world with effective solutions. By tackling the problem of safe and reliable transportation and care for kids, she overhauled the school transportation system and freed thousands of parents to work for America.

She is an inspiration to budding entrepreneurs about the power of an idea and that passion, perseverance, and a bold vision can help overcome every challenge.

Change happens when ordinary people take the first step to do extraordinary things that initially seem far beyond them.

From her humble beginnings in India, Ritu now swims with big tech executives in corporate America.

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