Zoho launches Zia Agents to expand AI capabilities

Zoho Corporation has announced the launch of Zia Agents, along with Agent Studio and Agent Marketplace, to expand its AI offerings across its wide-ranging portfolio of products.

The introduction of Zia Agents marks a new phase in Zoho's AI development, allowing enterprises to access, build, and distribute intelligent digital agents.

These agents are designed to be deployed across Zoho's diverse suite of over 100 products. Starting today, both Zoho and ManageEngine are previewing pre-built, task-specific Zia Agents, which are expected to be rolled out in the coming months.

Sridhar Vembu, Zoho Corporation's Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, commented on the integration of technology within the company. "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. I will devote more time to hands-on technical work for the company, spearheading several deep R&D initiatives, beginning with AI," he said. "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."

For over a decade, Zoho Corporation's AI offerings have evolved significantly. The Zia platform, established in 2015, facilitates intelligent actions across the company's ecosystem of applications. Since its inception, Zia has continually expanded its capabilities to enhance customer experience and improve productivity.

In 2018, Zoho introduced Ask Zia, a conversational assistant designed to help employees complete tasks more effectively. Ask Zia is integrated across all applications using Zoho's unified data platform, providing functionalities such as generating customer churn reports and summarising helpdesk tickets without leaving the application interface.

Building on these previous developments, Zoho has now unveiled several pre-built Zia Agents, such as the Account Manager Agent, SDR Agent, HR Agent, and IT Help Desk Agent, among others. These pre-built agents are complemented by the launch of Zia Agent Studio, which permits businesses to create custom agents with specific skillsets, which can then be distributed via Zoho's Agent Marketplace.

Zia Agent Studio offers both no-code and low-code experiences, allowing users to build agents tailored to their particular needs. Users can leverage existing Zia Skills, access data from a unified platform, and utilise various language models. These agents can operate within specific functions, like an SDR agent, or cross-functionally, such as an RFP agent. The company plans to enable deployment of Zia Agents in third-party applications as well.

The agents developed through Zia Agent Studio can be published in the Agent Marketplace, where Zoho provides a selection of pre-built agents. This marketplace also allows Zoho's partners and developers to contribute specialised AI agents, which can be reused and deployed by organisations.

Zoho Corporation's latest announcement follows a period of significant growth, having acquired 110,000 new customers in 2024. With a client base exceeding 850,000 globally, Zoho's extensive AI solutions benefit from a vast repository of functional data, distinguishing the company in the technology sector.

The AI capabilities of Zoho Corporation are underpinned by its proprietary tech stack and data centres. These resources ensure security, compliance with privacy standards, and robust AI deployment for a wide range of business needs.

The newly-announced capabilities will initially be made available to a select group of customers, with plans to progressively broaden access in the coming months.