Zoho—the “we do it all” tech vendor—held its analyst event in lovely Texas Hill Country last week. The event was both a launching pad for the company’s enterprise ambitions and the passing of the baton from co-founder Sridhar Vembu to his brother Mani. Sridhar has stepped down as CEO and taken on a Chief Scientist role; Mani now occupies the top slot. Besides the personnel shifts, the event made Zoho’s enterprise focus very clear. Zoho detailed numerous efforts to win and retain business with large enterprises, including discussions of expanded channel reach, stronger and more systematized professional services, verticalized product offers, and dedicated account management. While still early days for many of these new programs and endeavors, the aggregate efforts point towards Zoho being well equipped to tackle the enterprise market.

The event also featured a little discussion of AI—a real shocker, I know. Most notable among many, many AI-driven enhancements was the launch of Zia Agents, intelligent, task-specific AI assistants designed to automate workflows and enhance decision-making across Zoho’s extensive portfolio of 100+ applications. These pre-built digital agents, including roles such as Account Manager, SDR, HR, Customer Support, IT Help Desk, and Sales Coach, can be deployed to streamline various organizational functions.

Along with the agents themselves, the company unveiled Zia Agent Studio, a low code (and often no code) tool for brands to develop their own agents. Zia Agent Studio flexes its power by tapping into a wealth of pre-existing Zia Skills, tools from across the entire Zoho ecosystem, as well as data from a unified data platform, and diverse language models.

Maybe most interestingly given the vendor’s enterprise ambitions, Zoho launched a marketplace for AI agents, seeding it with several that its team built. Sure, so far, so standard. Zoho also opened the marketplace up for partners to develop, productize, and sell their agents in the marketplace, as well. While that mirrors what other vendors have also done—such as Salesforce with its Agentforce Partner Network, which can sell their agents through Salesforce’s AppExchange—Zoho has some creative ways to allow partners to tap into the broader Zoho ecosystem.

Building on its marketplace strategy, Zoho has introduced innovative features that set it apart from competitors. Partners can now create custom app bundles, combining their specialized agents with Zoho’s existing applications. For instance, a partner could package a set of franchisee management agents alongside Zoho’s Survey module, offering a comprehensive solution tailored to very specific industry needs. This flexibility extends to pricing as well, with partners having the ability to set custom pricing for their bundles. Zoho will set a pricing floor for partner agents (based essentially on how many GPUs they hog); the partners can charge whatever they choose over that floor. For the custom bundles, Zoho will provide the same floor, plus pricing for whatever Zoho modules or functions are wrapped into the package. Again, the partners can up the pricing from there.

These capabilities demonstrate Zoho’s commitment to moving upmarket. By allowing partners to leverage the full breadth of Zoho’s ecosystem in their offerings, the company is positioning itself as a versatile platform for enterprise-grade solutions.

Categories: Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: AI, agentic, AI agents, zoho, low code, marketplace