TLDR: Global technology firm Zoho has announced the launch of its proprietary Zia Large Language Model (LLM), Zia Agent Studio, and a suite of new AI tools, reinforcing its commitment to enterprise AI solutions with a focus on data privacy. Concurrently, the company reported robust financial performance in Kenya, achieving a 39% year-on-year revenue growth in 2024 and a 25% compound annual growth rate over the past three years, driven by expanding market presence and adoption of its unified business solutions.
Global technology powerhouse Zoho has made a significant stride in the artificial intelligence landscape with the unveiling of its in-house developed Zia Large Language Model (LLM), Zia Agent Studio, and an array of new AI-powered tools. This announcement, made at Zoholics Kenya 2025 in Nairobi, was coupled with impressive reports of the company’s strong business performance in the Kenyan market.
Zoho’s commitment to the African continent, particularly Kenya, is underscored by its remarkable financial achievements. The company reported a substantial 39% year-on-year revenue growth in Kenya for 2024. Over the past three years, Zoho has maintained a robust 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the region, a testament to the increasing demand for its integrated and scalable business solutions. This growth was further supported by an 83% expansion in its local partner network and a 72% increase in its Kenyan workforce in 2024, highlighting Kenya’s strategic importance as a key market in Africa. Popular Zoho solutions driving this uptake among Kenyan businesses include Zoho One, Workplace, CRM Plus, CRM, Books, and Zoho Desk, with strong adoption across diverse sectors such as IT services, financial services, insurance, energy, manufacturing, telecommunications, retail, real estate, and construction.
At the forefront of Zoho’s new AI capabilities is Zia LLM, a proprietary large language model developed entirely in-house leveraging NVIDIA’s AI-accelerated computing platform. Designed specifically for enterprise use, Zia LLM supports critical functions such as structured data extraction, summarization, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and code generation. It is available in three model sizes—1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters—each optimized for different user contexts to ensure efficient resource consumption. Veerakumar Natarajan, Zoho’s Kenya Country Head, emphasized the company’s dedication to data privacy, stating, “By building our AI in-house, we give Kenyan businesses the tools to boost productivity without compromising security.” This approach ensures all data processing remains on Zoho’s servers.
Complementing Zia LLM, Zoho also introduced Zia Agent Studio, a no-code platform that empowers organizations to create custom AI agents for various tasks, including customer service triage. This studio simplifies the agent creation process, making it fully prompt-based with the option for low-code customization, and provides access to over 700 actions across Zoho’s product suite. These AI agents can be deployed autonomously, triggered by specific actions, or integrated into customer conversations, effectively acting as ‘digital employees’ that respect existing user access permissions. The company has also launched an Agent Marketplace, offering pre-built AI agents like Revenue Growth Specialist, Deal Analyzer, and Candidate Screener, and will soon allow ecosystem partners, independent software vendors, and individual developers to host their own agents.
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Further enhancements to Zoho’s AI portfolio include two proprietary automatic speech recognition (ASR) models for English and Hindi speech-to-text conversion, with plans for additional language support. Zia LLM is slated for availability to Zoho customers in the coming months, while Zia Agents, Zia Agent Studio, and the Agent Marketplace are currently rolling out to early access users, with general availability expected towards the end of 2025. Pricing details will be announced at the time of general availability. Zoho’s CEO, Mani Vembu, has also commented on the broader market, suggesting that SaaS product prices could see a significant crash due to oversupply, while also noting that the projection of AI as a ‘great disruptor’ might be an overstatement in the B2B sector for the moment.
