Zoho Corporation 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 organizations. Beginning
today, Zoho and ManageEngine will be 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. 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. "Utilizing 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, summarize the outcomes of each customer's
recent interactions, filter and
summarize helpdesk tickets, analyze 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 customized 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 specialized AI agents through the
marketplace, which can be reused and instantly deployed by organizations.
Organizational Differentiation
Today's announcement follows record growth for Zoho
Corporation, 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 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.