TLDR: Zoho has significantly expanded its artificial intelligence offerings by launching a comprehensive suite of in-house developed AI tools. This includes its proprietary large language model, Zia LLM, and a no-code agent-building platform, Zia Agent Studio. The initiative emphasizes data privacy, business-specific applications, and efficiency, leveraging NVIDIA’s AI-accelerated computing platform.
Zoho, a global technology company with a substantial presence, particularly in markets like India and Africa, has announced a major leap in its artificial intelligence strategy. The company unveiled a new suite of AI tools, prominently featuring its proprietary large language model (LLM), Zia LLM, alongside an innovative agent-building platform, Zia Agent Studio, and a marketplace for pre-built AI agents.
Breaking from the industry trend of relying on third-party generative AI providers such as OpenAI or Anthropic, Zoho has developed Zia LLM entirely in-house. This strategic decision leverages NVIDIA’s AI-accelerated computing platform, allowing Zoho to maintain full control over its AI stack. The Zia LLM family comprises custom-built large language models specifically designed for diverse business use cases. Zoho has initially trained three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters, each meticulously optimized for tasks such as structured data extraction, summarization, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and code generation. The company has also indicated plans to further scale its model sizes with new parameter increases expected by the end of 2025.
The Zia Agent Studio provides a user-friendly, no-code environment, empowering businesses to build their own AI agents. Complementing this, Zoho has launched over 25 ready-to-deploy Zia Agents, including specialized agents tailored for Indian customers to verify documents like PAN cards, Voter IDs, and GSTINs. These agents are designed to streamline various business activities, from HR background checks to financial document verification. Furthermore, a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server has been introduced to facilitate interaction between third-party systems and Zoho’s extensive library of actions.
Zoho executives have underscored the company’s core philosophy behind this AI expansion. Kehinde Ogundare, Zoho Nigeria’s country head, stated, “Today’s announcement emphasises Zoho’s longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities because of the business context, and value.” Mani Vembu, CEO of Zoho, further elaborated, “Our LLM model is trained specifically for business use cases, keeping privacy and governance at its core, which has resulted in lowering the inference cost, passing on that value to the customers, while also ensuring that they are able to utilise AI productively and efficiently.” Vembu also highlighted Zoho’s unique approach: “Our differentiation comes from offering agents over our low code platform so that there is a human in the loop for verification and modification. We call this co-creation with the AI agent. It is much simpler to verify and make changes in the UI screen than reading the code.”
A critical aspect of Zoho’s AI strategy is its unwavering commitment to data privacy. Zia LLM enables customers to retain their data on Zoho’s own servers, thereby eliminating the need to send sensitive information to external AI cloud providers. The proprietary LLM has been strategically deployed across Zoho’s data centers in the US, India, and Europe.
Also Read:
- India Inc.’s Silent AI Transformation: Reshaping Business Operations Behind the Scenes
- India’s Digital Future: Embracing Open Source Generative AI for National Sovereignty
Beyond LLMs and agents, Zoho is also rolling out automatic speech recognition models for speech-to-text conversion in English and Hindi, with plans to expand support to other Indian and European languages. The company reported a robust 32% growth in India during 2024, its second-largest market globally, driven by sectors such as IT services, banking, manufacturing, retail, and education. Despite these significant AI advancements, Zoho’s top management has affirmed that these innovations have not negatively impacted jobs or hiring within the company.
