Zum Mobility Symposium Welcomes Industry Leaders, Unveils Zum’s New Connected Mobility Experience (CMX)
On April 16, Zūm welcomed school district leaders, policymakers, investors, and other industry leaders to the Zum Mobility Symposium, a gathering focused on the future of student mobility and how Zum CMX supports student success in learning and the classroom.
Introducing Zum CMX (Connected Mobility Experience)
The symposium also introduced Zum CMX™, a fully integrated system that coordinates people, vehicles, and operations in real time and enables transportation systems to move from creating disruption and anxiety to reliability, transparency, and efficiency.
Ritu Narayan, CEO, presenting the Keynote and introducing Zum CMX
The Zum CMX platform replaces fragmented, disconnected workflows with a unified system that orchestrates routing, dispatch, workforce management, safety systems, and stakeholder communications within a single operating model. Selected in 17 states, and already deployed across more than 4,500 schools, Zum CMX delivers an average on-time performance of 98% and a 4.9/5 parent satisfaction rating across 1.7 million ratings.
Vivek Garg delivers remarks in front of Zum CMX Blueprint
“Student transportation is the largest mass mobility system in the country. The system is antiquated, it’s disconnected, and it is not working well — in fact, it’s begging for an end-to-end systemic solution,” Zum Founder and CEO Ritu Narayan said in her keynote speech. “We’re asking drivers to take care of our children and not giving them the communication tools they need to do that well.”
Narayan added that student mobility is “not a transportation problem; it’s a problem of disconnected systems. … (That’s why) Zum has built the first student mobility system ever designed around people — not just buses.”
Highlights of the Symposium included:
Zum shared new research from NORC at the University of Chicago that reveals a widespread but under-recognized problem affecting students across the country, which Zum calls the Transportation Anxiety Crisis. According to the new survey, 54% of parents report that their child has expressed concern or worry about using school transportation, and 39% report that their child has arrived late to school due to school transportation issues. Based on missed school days and late arrivals alone, Zum calculates the disruption as approximately 55 billion instructional minutes lost per year, resulting in roughly $15 billion in wasted educational spending. Learn more about this research here
An investor panel, “Perspectives on the Future of Mobility,” featured Bryan Schreier, Partner, Sequoia Capital; Steve Ellis, Managing Partner, The Rise Fund, TPG; and Ari Lakhani, Head of Sustainability, GIC, and Miriam Rivera, and CEO and Co-Founder, Ulu Ventures. Moderated by Narayan, the discussion focused on how Zum’s AI-driven model is successfully disrupting the $50 billion mass mobility market and the just-announced $100 million investment from TPG, bringing Zum’s total funds raised to $430 million and valuation to $1.7 billion. “We already bet on delivering hamburgers with DoorDash and groceries with Instacart, so why wouldn’t we bet on delivering kids safely?” Schreier said. “The opportunity to get kids to school and improve education outcomes, the savings for districts that can go back into teachers and schools, and the ability to tell me where my most precious gift is — this company is just a win-win-win.
Left to right: Ritu Narayan, Bryan Schreier, Sequoia; Steve Ellis, TPG; Miriam Rivera, Ulu Ventures; and Ari Lakhani, GIC
Key Zum school district partners also took the stage to share their firsthand experience with Zum CMX. Kim Raney, Executive Director of Transportation at Oakland Unified School District, described how CMX has put her entire transportation operation in the palm of her hand — giving her real-time visibility and allowing her to stay focused on what matters most: the student experience. Tomas Beccar-Varela, Head of Transportation at San Francisco Unified, stated “[w]e were able to reduce our routes by 10% immediately with CMX and because of that we have saved $3.5 million on a yearly basis,” said Tomas Beccar-Varela, Executive Director of Transportation at San Francisco Unified School District. “Before we started using Zum, we had a consultancy group do an optimization analysis. They told us we were running a very efficient system and there was nothing else we could do to change things. And then we started using Zum — we cut routes immediately, all our metrics, KPIs, everything improved right away. Their analysis was clearly incorrect.”
Left Kim Raney, Executive Director of Transportation at OUSD, with Zum CEO, Ritu Narayan
Left Tomas Beccar-Varela, Transportation Director of SFUSD, and Paul Ahn, General Manager, Zum SF
A customer panel, “Best Practices in Student Mobility,” moderated by Zum VP of Partnerships Sarah Skinner, featured LaTonya C. Franklin, Chief Academic Officer at Kansas City Public Schools; Paul Rosencrans, Transportation Director at Fresno Unified Schools; and Micah Brassfield, Vice President of Operations at Transpar. Panelists shared how CMX has delivered measurable change: transportation-related absences at Kansas City Public Schools dropped by 86%. “Poor transportation results in students coming in late, feeling stressed and behind — sometimes they are even embarrassed,” said Franklin. “Ultimately, this affects students’ feelings about school in general.”
Left to right: Sarah Skinner; Paul Rosencrans; Dr. Latanya Franklin; and Micah Brassfield
Attendees also participated in networking events and live demonstrations of Zum CMX™, the first complete system that puts people at the center of student mobility and provides real-time, map-based ride tracking, AI-powered arrival time estimates, and rider verification for every trip. “Route planning that used to take weeks and weeks across thousands of students and over 200 schools can be done with a single press of a button,” said Zum.
Abhishek Garg conducts Zum CMX product demo
The day extended well beyond the Symposium itself. Zum’s milestone announcements were marked by activations at some of the most iconic financial landmarks in the country — the NASDAQ Tower and Times Square in New York City, and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Thank you to everyone who attended the first Zum Mobility Symposium and helped make it an insightful and successful event! Thank you to all our team, customers, investors, and partners who helped make this milestone possible!