Zoho Expands AI Capabilities with Zia Agents, Agent Studio, and Marketplace

Zoho Expands AI Capabilities with Zia Agents, Agent Studio, and Marketplace

Zoho collaborates with Nvidia to enhance its AI technology stack. Zoho Corporation (Zoho) has expanded the scope of its AI-powered assistant for business, Zia, with the announcement of Zia Agents, Zia Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace, further expanding its AI-driven automation capabilities across its ecosystem. "Together, these solutions empower enterprises to access, build, and distribute intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations," Zoho Corporation said on Tuesday, February 4, 2025. Also Read: Akash Ambani Urges Rapid Adoption of AI and Data Centre Policy Reform in India Starting Tuesday, Zoho and its IT management division, ManageEngine, will preview several pre-built Zia Agents, with a full rollout planned in the coming weeks across Zoho's portfolio of over 100 products, the company said. "The speed of disruption and quality of innovation we are seeing in our industry right now has encouraged me to focus on my passion area, technology. I will devote more time to hands-on technical work for the company, spearheading several deep R&D initiatives, beginning with AI," said Sridhar Vembu, Zoho Corporation's Co-founder and Chief Scientist. Zoho Corporation says its in-house AI has evolved over the past decade from proactive to prescriptive to generative to agentic. Zia (2015): The foundational AI for intelligent automation across Zoho apps. The company says Zia possesses a vast and diverse skillset, with new skills being implemented regularly to boost customer experience and drive productivity. Ask Zia (2018): A system-wide conversational AI assistant that helps employees work smarter and accomplish tasks more effectively. Zia Agents (2024): Pre-built digital agents, including Account Manager, SDR, HR, Customer Support, IT Help Desk, and SalesCoach, designed to handle specific business functions. "For customers, partners, and developers looking to create their own agents, Zoho is launching Zia Agent Studio, allowing them to build and deploy customised agents with inherited skillsets, which can then be distributed through Zoho's Agent Marketplace," the company said. For enterprises looking to build customised AI solutions, Zia Agent Studio provides a no-code/low-code platform, enabling the creation of cross-functional agents. According to the company, these agents can integrate seamlessly across Zoho applications and will soon be deployable in third-party software. Additionally, the Agent Marketplace will allow businesses and developers to distribute and access AI agents tailored to industry-specific needs. Zoho Corporation said the "new agentic platform will advance Zoho Corporation's decade-long investment in AI to deliver unparalleled context and data-driven customer value," adding that these capabilities will begin to roll out to a limited set of customers, which will expand monthly. Also Read: Jio Delivers Data at 15 Cents a GB: Mukesh Ambani at Nvidia AI Summit 2024 In October of last year, Zoho Corporation announced that it would leverage Nvidia's AI computing platform -- which includes Nvidia NeMo, part of Nvidia AI Enterprise software -- to build and deploy its large language models (LLMs) in its SaaS applications. "Over the past year, the company has invested more than USD 10 million in Nvidia's AI technology and GPUs, and plans to invest an additional USD 10 million in the coming year." The company made this announcement during the Nvidia AI Summit in Mumbai. In September 2024, Zoho launched a new version of Zoho Analytics, an AI-powered self-service BI and analytics platform. The company said it has developed new AI and ML capabilities, enabling diagnostic insights, predictive analysis, and automated report and dashboard generation. Additional advancements to Zoho Analytics include a custom ML model-building studio, integration with OpenAI, and third-party BI platform extensions.

Zoho Corporation Announces Zia Agents; AI Platform Supporting Autonomous Agents Across Organisation's Broad Portfolio

New agentic platform will advance Zoho Corporation's decade-long investment in AI to deliver unparalleled context and data-driven customer value Zoho Corporation, a global technology company headquartered in Chennai, today expands the scope of Zia with the announcement of Zia Agents, Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace. Together, these solutions empower enterprises to access, build, and distribute intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations. Beginning today, Zoho and ManageEngine will be previewing pre-built, task-specific Zia Agents, which will be deployed across Zoho Corporation's combined portfolio of 100+ products in the coming weeks. "The speed of disruption and quality of innovation we are seeing in our industry right now has encouraged me to focus on my passion area, technology. I will devote more time to hands on technical work for the company, spearheading several deep R&D initiatives, beginning with AI," said Sridhar Vembu, Zoho Corporation's Co-founder and Chief Scientist. "Utilising Zoho's deep engineering expertise, its own data centers, and shared data model, we will develop powerful and usable solutions that drive customer value while retaining our commitment to customer flexibility and data privacy." Zoho Corporation's in-house AI has evolved over the past decade from proactive to prescriptive to generative to agentic: Zia: Launched in 2015, Zia is Zoho Corporation's foundational AI, facilitating all intelligent and contextual actions across the company's ecosystem of apps. Zia possesses a vast and diverse skillset. New skills are being implemented regularly to boost customer experience and drive productivity. Ask Zia: Launched in 2018, Ask Zia has developed into a system-wide conversational assistant that helps employees work smarter and accomplish tasks more effectively. For example, an account manager can review a report of customers at risk of churn, summarise the outcomes of each customer's recent interactions, filter and summarise helpdesk tickets, analyse trends in their industry, and reach out to that customer for a meeting based on the employee's upcoming travel schedule, without leaving the Ask Zia interface. Ask Zia is powered by Zoho's unified data platform and will be contextually embedded across all applications. Zia Agents: Today, Zoho Corporation has previewed some of the several dozens of pre-built Zia Agents that will be rolled out in the coming months, including an Account Manager Agent, SDR Agent, HR Agent, Customer Support Agent, IT Help Desk Agent, and a SalesCoach Agent. For customers, partners, and developers looking to create their own agents, Zoho is launching Zia Agent Studio, allowing them to build and deploy customised agents with inherited skillsets, which can then be distributed through Zoho's Agent Marketplace. Zia Agent Studio: Offering no-code and low-code experiences, Zia Agent Studio enables users to build autonomous agents with skills relevant to their specific needs. Zia Agent Studio users can also access a wide range of pre-existing Zia Skills, tools from across the Zoho ecosystem, data from a unified data platform, and a range of language models. These can be agents within a function (like an SDR agent or email support agent) or natively cross-functional agents (like an RFP agent or loan approval agent). They can be deployed on any Zoho application and summoned using Ask Zia. Moving forward, Zia Agents will be deployable in any third-party application as well. Additionally, Zia Agents with complementary skillsets can be combined using Zia Agent Studio, creating a single agent capable of cross-functional work.Agent Marketplace: Agents created using Zia Agent Studio can be published in the Agent Marketplace. Zoho Corporation will offer a pre-built roster of agents, while the company's ecosystem of partners and developers can build and distribute specialised AI agents through the marketplace, which can be reused and instantly deployed by organisations. Organisational Differentiation Today's announcement follows record growth for Zoho Corporation, which onboarded 1,10,000 new customers globally in 2024. With over 8,50,000 customers globally in diverse industries, using a range of tools across Zoho and ManageEngine, Zoho Corporation's AI solutions are informed by a vast range of functional data. This is a core differentiator for the company, putting it in a unique position to serve businesses with cutting-edge technology. Technological Differentiation Zoho Corporation's distinct technological breadth and depth is a fundamental differentiator, particularly in AI development and deployment. Leveraging its shared data model, owned and managed tech stack, including global data centers, and a broad application portfolio, Zoho Corporation's highly secure, privacy-compliant, usable, capable, and deeply knowledgeable AI agents deliver superior technology at a high value to its growing customer base. Availability These capabilities will begin to roll out to a limited set of customers, which will expand monthly. About Zoho Corporation Zoho Corporation is a privately-held, profitable technology company. Founded in 1996, it is headquartered in Chennai, India. Zoho Corp. has more than 18,000 employees globally. It is the parent company of prominent technology brands including ManageEngine, Zoho, TrainerCentral, Qntrl, and Zakya. Zoho Privacy Pledge Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 100 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit: https://www.zoho.com/privacy-commitment.html

Zoho embraces AI era post-DeepSeek with new agentic technology

Zoho, on Tuesday, unveiled its agentic AI capabilities across its platform, allowing enterprises to access, create, and deploy intelligent, autonomous digital agents. In the coming weeks, Zoho and ManageEngine will preview pre-built, task-specific agents throughout Zoho's product suite. "We want the LLMs today for a chain of thought reasoning and not memorising our data...We also need output engineering," said Sridhar Vembu, chief scientist and cofounder of Zoho Corp.The AI era can be divided into post-DeepSeek and pre-DeepSeek, said Sridhar Vembu, chief scientist and cofounder of Zoho Corp that develops cloud-based software and online business tools. "It was assumed that Big Tech will own AI, and everyone else will pay tribute. Over $250 billion has been invested in AI; Microsoft alone put in $90B. But that was the BC era (big capex). Now, we are in AD -- the After DeepSeek era," Vembu said at Zoho's annual global research analyst summit that was livestreamed from Austin, Texas on Tuesday. Chinese startup DeepSeek has roiled the global tech market with its open-source large language models (LLMs), claimed to be developed at a fraction of the cost of its competing artificial intelligence models. Even as AI becomes a major focus area, the already-saturated software-as-a-service market is likely to see continuing overcrowding and companies will have to chart their own differentiators with the technology, Rajesh Ganesan, chief executive of ManageEngine, the enterprise IT solutions arm of Zoho Corp, told ET. "The (SaaS) market was always overcrowded -- take any function, you have thousands of alternatives," Ganesan said, explaining that the market has been saturated with a handful of features masked as products, with many companies looking for an exit rather than having a long-term vision. "Now, with AI coming in, we will see the same pattern repeating; all companies would have to have some sort of an AI story now," he said, adding that how each company differentiates itself remains to be seen. Zoho on Tuesday announced the launch of agentic AI capabilities across its platform for enterprises to access, build and distribute intelligent, autonomous digital agents. Zoho and ManageEngine will be previewing pre-built, task-specific agents across Zoho's product portfolio in the coming weeks. "Utilising Zoho's deep engineering expertise, its own data centres, and shared data model, we will develop powerful and usable solutions that drive customer value while retaining our commitment to customer flexibility and data privacy," said Vembu, who recently stepped down as the company CEO to take up the mantle as chief scientist to spearhead its deep R&D initiatives including in AI. "We want the LLMs today for a chain of thought reasoning and not memorising our data...We also need output engineering," Vembu said. He also cautioned that any unstructured output from AI needs human verification, like legal briefs or annual reports. He is most excited about "extraordinary programmer productivity". "Particularly UI programmer productivity. Particularly low code and no code, that is where we see maximum changes happening...There will be 10X to 100X productivity gains for programmers using AI," he said. Zoho will redirect energy and investments towards AI and technology development, particularly agentic AI capabilities, said Ganesan, without specifying the amount being invested. To start with, it will focus on a few use cases and pilots with customers. While cloud infrastructure costs have historically been the largest chunk of most SaaS players' expenses, as they look to become AI companies, the significant costs of AI will be a big factor they need to consider, Ganesan said. Those investing in AI are pouring in billions and would want to recover it from their customers, he said, adding that Zoho's strategy has been to focus on developing its own AI stack and infrastructure, from its own large language model to hosting on its own data centres. Meanwhile, customers are also starting to renegotiate with vendors on costs, seeking to reap the benefits of the falling costs of deploying AI, Ganesan said. "AI is not something that you can claim a special premium price for. It is starting to become a basic feature and capability that people expect," he said. Companies like DeepSeek showing that AI can be made more compute-efficiently and cost-effectively is an inspiration for companies like Zoho, Ganesan said, adding that Zoho will build agentic technology in-house while allowing a choice of models for enterprises to run them on. The agents that will be rolled out in the coming months include an account manager agent, SDR agent, HR agent, customer support agent, IT help desk agent and a sales coach agent.