Zūm Services, Inc.
Small Business, Big Impact Contest Entry
There are over 10 million women who have left the workplace to take care of their children, and Ritu Narayan's mother is one of them. To solve this problem, Ritu founded Zūm in 2014 with an aim to provide kids with reliable transportation and care without parents sacrificing their career.
Delivering on our mission to build the world’s largest and most-trusted platform for kids transportation and care does not always translate to transporting children to and from school and related activities.
As COVID-19 has torn through various communities across the country, we have learned to interpret our mission in a different way.
Without meal and materials delivery systems in place, some children are left without access to school breakfast and lunch programs.
In order to bring equitable access to education, Zūm is bridging the transportation gap that prevents some student populations from receiving educational materials and regular meals by providing meal and educational delivery services. To date the Zūm Team has delivered over 1,000 school breakfasts and lunches.
In addition to our delivery services, we have created a webinar series and comprehensive resource guide bringing in education leaders to discuss topics such as returning to school safely, safety in transportation, and promoting student mental health.
We are proud to be able to leverage our platform to help our communities right now, in a time where they are most in need.
Zūm Services, Inc.
Small Business, Big Impact Contest Entry
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Zūm Services, Inc.
Small Business, Big Impact Contest Entry
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Zūm Services, Inc.
Small Business, Big Impact Contest Entry
Our Impact
Founded in 2014, Zūm is a student transportation company revolutionizing the way kids get to school. Delivering on our mission to build the world’s largest and most-trusted platform for kids transportation and care does not always translate to transporting children to and from school and related activities. As COVID-19 has torn through various communities across the country, we have learned to interpret our mission in a different way. Throughout the past few months, following our mission has taken the form of viewing “transportation” as access to education and “care” as consideration for the circumstances of all of the students we serve.
We have since translated this new understanding of our mission statement into delivering meals, instructional materials, and technology to students. Because without meal and materials delivery systems in place, there will be children left without equitable access to education and school breakfast/ lunch programs. As soon as we learned of school closures, we began to mobilize our network and technology to help schools, families, and, importantly, students while we shelter-in-place. We initiated conversations with school district partners to determine how we can best support them and built infrastructure on the Zūm Technology Platform that supports this new delivery service option, and communicated to drivers on the platform about the change in plans. To this day, we have delivered thousands of meals for students in Oakland Unified School District, San Francisco Unified School District, Alameda Unified School District, Redondo Beach Unified School District and more.
In addition to our delivery services, we have created a webinar series bringing in education leaders from a variety of areas, including at the district, school, county, and state level. This series covers topics such as returning to school safely, safety in transportation, and promoting student mental health. We also included a master back-to-school safety resource guide on our website for use by folks working in education. We update this guide with new information every week to make sure we can keep our community up-to-date.
Finally, as back-to-school is right around the corner, our Engineering Team has also added new tools and capabilities within the Zūm Technology Platform (including Parent App, School Dashboard, and Operations Dashboard) to optimize, plan, manage, and monitor student transportation while protecting the health and safety of students and drivers. Our Operations Team is working in tandem with other internal and external departments to establish safer procedures for drivers and riders. In accordance with this effort, they are retraining our Customer Support Team to provide more support to parents and districts to plan for uncertainties during back-to-school this year.
COVID-19 has not been easy on our community. We are grateful to our school district partners, drivers, and families for coming together to help those who need us most during these times — our student riders. We will continue to leverage our platform to fill transportation inequity gaps and serve the community with dedication, innovation, equity, and care during these unprecedented times.