Zoho unleashes new
AI Agents

Zoho Corporation has expanded the scope of its AI assistant, Zia, with the release of Zia Agents, Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace.

The new range enhances enterprises to access, build, and distribute intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations. Zoho and ManageEngine are previewing pre-built, task-specific Zia Agents, which will deploy across Zoho Corporation’s combined portfolio of 100+ products in the coming weeks.

“The speed of disruption and quality of innovation we’re seeing in our industry right now has encouraged me to focus on my passion area, technology,” says Sridhar Vembu, co-founder and chief scientist of Zoho Corporation.

“I will devote more time to hands-on technical work for the company, spearheading several deep R&D initiatives, beginning with AI. 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.”

Zoho’s AI evolution

Zoho’s in-house AI has evolved over the past decade from proactive to prescriptive to generative to agentic.

Zia,Zoho’s foundational AI, was launched in 2015, and facilitates all intelligent and contextual actions across the company’s ecosystem of apps. Zia has a vast and diverse skillset. New skills are being implemented regularly to boost customer experience and drive productivity.

Ask Zia, which launched in 2018, 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: Zoho 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. 

_{Image courtesy Zoho.}

Zia Agent Studio

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.

Offering no-code and low-code experiences, Zia Agent Studio enables users to build autonomous agents with skills relevant to their specific needs. Users can 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. 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 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

The announcement follows record growth for Zoho, which onboarded 110,000 new customers globally in 2024. With over 850,000 customers globally in diverse industries, using a range of tools across Zoho and ManageEngine, Zoho’s AI solutions are informed by a vast range of functional data. This is a core differentiator for the company, putting it in a distinct 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 centres, 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.

* Sign up for Zia Agents waitlist on the Zoho website here.