He looked at the Big Tech shuttle buses clogging the Bay Area and decided the fix was not fewer buses. It was a better commute for everyone else.
Most people never think about commuter benefits. That is precisely the problem Shaurya Saluja decided to spend his career on. As co-founder and CEO of Fleet, he runs a San Francisco company built on a counterintuitive idea: the way to decarbonize transportation is not a flashy new vehicle. It is paperwork that works.
Fleet manages all of an employer's mobility spending in one place - pre-tax transit benefits, employer subsidies, government grants, and rewards - across every mode of getting to work. The pitch is simple. Give companies of any size the commuting tools that, until now, only the biggest employers could afford to build. Saluja calls it bringing big-company commuting superpowers to everyone.
In August 2024, he made a hard choice that most founders dread: he narrowed the company. Fleet pivoted to focus exclusively on commuter-benefits management, a market sharpened by regulatory mandates that require companies with as few as 20 to 50 employees to offer transit programs. The same announcement carried better news - total investment had crossed $5 million, in a round led by Congruent Ventures.
The thesis underneath all of it is blunt: transportation is the largest single contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and the commute is the part of it employers can actually influence. Fix the friction, and the carbon follows.
Around 2018, a particular kind of vehicle had become a Bay Area lightning rod: the private shuttle buses ferrying Big Tech employees to suburban campuses. To many residents, they were rolling symbols of inequality - perks for the few, traffic for the rest. Saluja saw the same buses and drew a different conclusion. The buses were not the problem. The exclusivity was.
Fleet was spun out of research efforts at Stanford and got its start working alongside the transportation teams at leading tech campuses - the exact operations that produced those buses. The early idea: take the flexible, sustainable commute options that giant companies engineered for themselves and make them available to employers of every size.
That origin still shapes the company. Fleet's team describes itself as a borderless group assembled across North America, mixing engineers with urban planners and designers - people who think about a commute as both a software problem and a city problem at the same time.
When everyone hated the tech shuttles, the obvious move was to attack them. Saluja did the opposite - he tried to democratize what they represented. That instinct, to fix access rather than tear things down, is the whole company in miniature.
As Managing Partner for Product & Tech at Aakon Labs, he introduced peer-to-peer carsharing to Eastern Europe. He also held product, engineering, and growth roles at LEO Express. His first transportation venture went international before his domestic one did.
He earned a B.S. in Computer Science and an M.S. in Data Analytics from Stanford, and researched climate and transportation at Stanford Energy. He served as Entrepreneur in Residence at the Stanford Venture Studio and spent time in the bullpen at Foundation Capital.
Spun out of Stanford research, Fleet begins by working with the transportation teams at leading tech campuses. Along the way he launches demand-responsive carpooling in the Bay Area and a Mobility-as-a-Benefit program with the Denver South TMA.
The Association for Commuter Transportation names him to its 2023 40 Under 40, a recognition specific to the niche but growing world of transportation demand management.
Fleet goes all-in on commuter-benefits management. Total investment crosses $5 million, led by Congruent Ventures with Virta Ventures, Plug and Play, and Rally Cap participating.
Saluja's diagnosis: commuter-benefit programs have existed for years, but they have been too complicated for employers to adopt and too frustrating for employees to navigate. The benefit was never the problem. The experience was.
Fleet handles commute analysis, program configuration, invoicing, payments, auto-deducts, subsidies, and tax benefits - then plugs into HR, accounting, and finance systems so employees can self-serve. The work happens in the background.
The promise is dual: save companies and employees money while reducing emissions from transportation - the biggest contributor to climate change in the country - and lift corporate sustainability numbers in the process.
Fleet was a Stanford research effort before it was ever a company. The lab came first, the cap table second.
His first carsharing venture launched in Eastern Europe. He took a transportation idea abroad before bringing one home.
The award he won, ACT's 40 Under 40, lives in transportation demand management - a field most people have never heard of, and a few quietly obsess over.
Fleet's team is deliberately borderless, assembled across North America and mixing software engineers with urban planners.