Zoho unveils Zia Agents to expand AI capabilities for businesses

Zoho, a global technology company, has unveiled Zia Agents, a new set of artificial intelligence (AI) tools aimed at helping businesses access, create, and deploy intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations.

According to the organisation, starting Wednesday, it will collaborate with ManageEngine to preview pre-built, task-specific Zia Agents, which will be deployed across Zoho’s extensive portfolio of over 100 products in the coming weeks.

In 2015, Zoho introduced Zia as its foundational AI, designed to enhance intelligence and context across its suite of applications.

In 2018, it evolved into Ask Zia, a system-wide conversational assistant that simplifies workflows by analysing trends, managing customer interactions, and seamlessly scheduling meetings.

However, Zoho said Zia Agents is a more sophisticated AI solution featuring pre-built agents tailored for roles such as account manager, SDR, HR, customer support, IT help desk, and SalesCoach.

To enable further customisation, Zoho is launching Zia Agent Studio, empowering users to create and deploy their own AI agents.

The agents can be shared via the Zoho Agent Marketplace, expanding AI-driven automation across enterprises.

Sridhar Vembu, Zoho’s co-founder and chief scientist, emphasised that the AI innovation will enhance customer value while maintaining Zoho’s commitment to flexibility and data privacy.

“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,” Vembu said.

“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.”

The organisation further highlighted that Zia Agent Studio will enable customers, partners, and developers to create and deploy custom AI agents with inherited skill sets.

The agents can then be shared and distributed through Zoho’s Agent Marketplace, fostering broader AI-driven automation.