Meet the founder of the newly minted unicorn that’s transforming school buses for 27 million American students.

– pick on. In a tough market for startups, we’re hearing more about unicorns closing than new ones joining the herd. But the woman-founded company joined the ranks of unicorns this week with an unusual business: school buses.

Zum, founded by CEO Ritu Narayan, Raised $140 million Series E round.with a new value of $1.3 billion. The round was led by Singaporean investment firm GIC, with participation from Sequoia and Softbank.

Narayan came up with the idea for the school bus startup a decade ago, inspired by her struggle to get her children to and from school while she worked at eBay. “This problem is generational, it’s beyond me,” she says she realized. “I need to do something about it.”

What started as a way to improve pick-up and drop-off for parents has turned into a complex business involving AI, electric vehicles, and public-private partnerships with school districts.

Oracle Elam, 50, grew up in India and moved to the United States at age 25. He identified student transportation as a $50 billion industry — “the largest mass transit system in America” ​​— serving 27 million students that “has never been impacted before.” The industry hasn’t changed in 80 years,” she says.

Zum’s fleet of tech-enabled school buses gives parents insight into children’s whereabouts through an app and allows buses to be used for purposes other than morning and afternoon commutes instead of sitting idle for the rest of the day. give Zum aims to “connect back to the grid” for buses. Provide energy when not in use.. The startup relies on AI to “optimize routes.” Narayan says Zum has reduced the number of school buses in San Francisco from 236 to 193 and reduced travel time for students.

Narayan didn’t have experience with EVs before creating Zum, but he felt the school bus was “a great electric asset.” “It’s the biggest battery on wheels,” she explains. “It’s four to six times the battery of an EV car, and it has a much more predictable travel pattern. It travels locally and isn’t used for peak energy demand in the evening or summer.

Currently, the Bay Area-based company has about 2,000 employees and provides transportation to 4,000 schools in the United States.

Narayan advises other founders looking for their unicorn idea in a dark market to “always solve real customer pain.” That’s how he founded his company — though about five years in he made the tough call to change his business model. “I was very connected to my personal story. It was the story of my foundation,” she says. “But I knew the right thing to do for the company was to prepare.”

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Even in the headlines

– Lost network. New research has found that women are often viewed negatively by co-workers when they develop strong relationships with their superiors, but men are not. Building such networks is critical to personal success and a necessary step to getting more women into the C-suite, but women who do so face a loss of respect from co-workers and a demotion. have to do it. The Wall Street Journal

– Problems with X. Researchers at Stanford University believe that the X chromosome, which is present twice in women but only once in men, is why women have a significantly higher risk of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. but increases. A type of RNA produced by a woman’s X chromosome makes proteins that can attack the immune system if a genetic predisposition or other factors are present, the research says. good fortune

– Fallen Angels. Women in Britain are frustrated by a new British law that requires a minimum income of £170,000 ($216,413) to become an angel investor, a threshold that disproportionately disqualifies women. Because women-led businesses are more likely to receive funding from female investors, the new floor — 70% more than before — could squeeze startups founded by women. Bloomberg

– A stadium of their own. The country’s first stadium built exclusively for a women’s soccer team — and one of the few stadiums in the world exclusively for female players — is less than two months away from its grand opening. Kansas City, Mo. CPKC Stadium, which will be home to Kansas City’s current women’s soccer team, is scheduled to open on March 16 with a capacity of 11,500 and a total cost of $117 million. The Washington Post

– Running on EV. Cathy Wood’s investment firm ARK Invest predicted a rally in the sluggish electric vehicle market on Wednesday, just days after the ARK ETF picked up more than $141 million worth of Tesla stock. . The firm pointed to the falling cost of electric vehicle batteries to back up the forecast, which also predicts a crash in the market for conventional cars. good fortune

Movers and Shakers: Minute media fixed Gina Klein to global vice president of brand and athlete strategy at The Players’ Tribune.

On my radar

How the CEO of Barstool Sports Built a $250 Million Media Company good fortune

Students report to him for race lessons. Then he taught it again The Washington Post

Ovulation is a mystery that can unlock human aging. Financial Times

Parting words

“It’s not just a cool thing I’m doing, I think it’s a really smart investment.”

-Aurora James, creator of the Fifteen Percent Covenant, who Challenges businesses to purchase 15% of their products from black-owned businesses.. Four years after its creation, the pledge has generated $14 billion in revenue for black-owned companies.

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