Leena AI: The Siri For Employees, A Founder’s Story with Adit Jain

Adit Jain is an IIT-Delhi grad and Y-Combinator alumni, he prides himself on the astute understanding of employee-facing teams i.e. what they need in order to deliver a stellar employee experience. Post a summer training at EY and a marketing internship at IIM Lucknow, Adit began his entrepreneurial journey with Chatteron in 2015. A study of why Chatteron wasn’t making enough money brought him and his other two co-founders to the concept of Leena AI, and there has been no looking back since then.

I was born and brought up in New Delhi, and like any typical kid, I was a fan of all kinds of outdoor activities – cricket, football, badminton – you name it. I was always a very outgoing child, always surrounded by a lot of friends, whether engaged in playing games or enjoying my life in general. Studying took a backseat at the time. It was only during my penultimate year in school when I prioritized studying. For the next two years, I spent 14 -16 hrs a day just studying. After school, I took the JEE, one of the most difficult entrance examinations across India, and got into IIT-Delhi.

For me, entrepreneurship is about creating new things, making something from nothing. I’ve always enjoyed building with my own hands – from Legos to electrical circuits. My favorite part about building something is witnessing it come to life. This inclination of mine acted as a catalyst and helped me steer to the next best thing. That is one specific thing that has kept me going on, leading me to Leena AI as well. All throughout my college days at IIT Delhi, I was working towards one goal: becoming an entrepreneur through the virtue of inventing something great, something useful. In my final year, while others were preparing and applying for jobs, I was meeting investors – pitching my ideas, learning about startups, entrepreneurship, and so on. But I kept on going, and persistently followed my passion. By the end of the year, I had secured my first seed funding for the company. Looking back, I am glad that I chose to believe in myself.

If I have to give a business lesson to a startup founder, it would be “sell first, build later.” As a beginner then and a leader now, this philosophy has been my leading light. Every product works based on this core philosophy. So if you have an idea, create a prototype or a mock-up design and go to at least 5 customers before you market it. At Leena AI, that’s how we operate as well. When we have a product idea, we go out to potential customers, introduce the product, and if they say, ‘yes, we want to use this, that’s our cue.