● Our story
We built SmartVan
because we're parents
too.
no reliable way to know where their child’s school van is. We decided to fix that.
Our mission
"Every child deserves a safe journey to school. Every
parent deserves to know it's happening."
What we believe
Four things we never compromise on.
Safety before features
Every product decision starts with one question: does this make children safer? Features that don’t contribute to that goal don’t ship, no matter how clever they are.
Radical transparency
Parents see everything — who the driver is, where the van is, exactly when their child boarded. No ambiguity, no “we’ll let you know later”. Real information, in real time.
Calm by design
SmartVan is not a notification machine. Every alert, every message, every UI decision is designed to reduce anxiety — not amplify it. Quiet by default. Loud only when it matters.
Built for all families
School transport affects families in Nairobi, London, Dubai and Karachi equally. SmartVan is designed for global accessibility — multiple languages, low-data modes, and devices of every budget.
How we got here.
The story of SmartVan in a few honest paragraphs.
The idea
A missed school van, a frantic parent, a 45-minute mystery. Our co-founder asked: why doesn’t an app for this exist yet?
First pilot
Three schools, 12 vans, 280 students. Parents cried with relief. Drivers loved the simplicity. We knew we were on to something.
Global launch
Expanded to 12 countries. 50,000 families now start their morning with SmartVan open on their phone.
Still building
We’re adding operator dashboards, multi-language support, and deeper school integrations. The mission stays the same.
SmartVan started with a question our co-founder Zara asked after her son’s school van arrived 40 minutes late with no explanation: “Why is there no app for this?”
She was right. Despite decades of GPS technology and smartphones in every pocket, school transport remained stubbornly opaque. Parents were still calling the school office. Schools were still fielding the same panicked questions every single morning. Drivers were operating in isolation, with no easy way to communicate status back to the families depending on them.
We built SmartVan to close that gap — not with a complicated enterprise platform, but with a simple, beautifully designed app that works equally well on a $50 Android and a flagship iPhone.
Our first pilot in 2023 was three schools in Karachi, 12 vans, and 280 students. Within the first week, the transport administrator told us: “Parent calls about van locations have basically stopped.” That’s still the outcome we design for every day.
Today SmartVan operates across 12 countries, protects over 50,000 student journeys daily, and works with more than 1,200 schools. But the team still talks to parents, drivers and school administrators every week. The best ideas we’ve shipped came directly from those conversations.
We’re a team of 40 across Karachi, London and Dubai — parents, engineers, designers, and people with a deep belief that the school run should be the most reassuring part of a parent’s morning, not the most anxious.
The team
Built by people who care.
A small team with a clear purpose. Most of us are parents ourselves.
Zara Ahmed
Co-Founder & CEO
Former product manager at a mobility startup. Mother of one. Founded SmartVan after one too many panicked school-run mornings.
Hassan Khan
Co-Founder & CTO
10 years building real-time location systems. Built SmartVan’s tracking infrastructure to be reliable even on 3G networks.
Sofia Patel
Head of Design
Designed products used by millions across South Asia and the Middle East. Believes that calm, reassuring design is a form of safety.
In the press
What people are writing about us.
TechCrunch
“SmartVan solves a problem that millions of families deal with every single morning — and it does it with uncommon elegance.”
The Guardian
“The app making school transport less of an ordeal for parents everywhere.”
Forbes
“A quiet, well-designed solution to a problem the ed-tech industry largely ignored.”
Dawn
“From Karachi to the world. How a local startup became the go-to school transport platform.”
Join 50,000+ families
who already trust SmartVan.
Free for parents. Easy for schools. Safe for children.
