How Zoho is democratising agentic AI for businesses across Africa and beyond with free access to advanced tools

Zoho Corporation is doubling down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. The global software company has announced the rollout of new agentic AI capabilities across its collaboration, customer experience, and human resources products. Notably, they come at no extra cost to users.

The move signals Zoho’s intent to make AI more accessible for small and mid-sized businesses that have long struggled with the complexity and cost of AI adoption.

Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head for Zoho Nigeria, described the update as a “removal of barriers” to enterprise-grade AI. “Businesses are increasingly eager to leverage AI but often face obstacles such as high implementation costs, data readiness challenges, and fragmented systems,” he said.

“Zoho’s unified, homegrown technology stack eliminates these barriers by allowing advanced AI features to be deployed automatically and at no extra cost. Our customers don’t need to invest in third-party integrations or additional tools; the technology simply arrives and works.”

At the core of its latest update is its agentic AI framework, a term the company uses to describe AI systems that can act independently, performing multi-step tasks without human micromanagement. Unlike traditional automation, which often relies on predefined workflows, agentic AI can make context-based decisions, adapt to changing data, and perform tasks that cut across multiple business apps.

This concept isn’t entirely new to Zoho. The company has been gradually building toward this point with its proprietary large language model, Zia LLM, and Zia Hubs, which give AI access to unstructured company data. Zia, Zoho’s long-running AI assistant, now serves as the foundation of the company’s agentic ecosystem, powering more than 55 integrated business applications in its suite.

Ogundare emphasised that this evolution is part of the company’s broader philosophy of independence.

“Zoho has always believed in building technology from the ground up, from data centres to AI models. That’s what gives us the flexibility to innovate responsibly, protect customer privacy, and scale AI affordably,” he said.

Smarter collaboration across the Zoho workplace

One of the biggest beneficiaries of this rollout is Zoho Workplace, the company’s collaboration suite that includes apps like Mail, Cliq, Sheet, and Tables. Users will now experience a more capable Ask Zia assistant, which can process multi-step commands across multiple apps. For instance, a user could ask Zia to summarise an email conversation, schedule a follow-up meeting, and create a shared document, all within a single command.

Zoho Tables introduces another innovation called AI Base Creation, which allows users to generate entire data structures from a short text prompt. This feature simplifies data organisation for teams that rely heavily on spreadsheets or project tracking.

Additionally, new tools such as keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, and language detection have been added to help teams make sense of unstructured data, from internal feedback forms to customer messages.

These features reflect its push to make advanced AI practical, not theoretical. Instead of requiring users to connect separate AI tools or write prompts in specific ways, Zoho’s agentic systems work naturally within the apps people already use every day.

Reinventing customer experience

Zoho’s customer service applications are also getting an intelligence boost. Zoho Desk, one of the company’s most widely used products, now features pre-built Zia Agents such as the Resolution Expert. This agent observes how support teams handle incoming tickets, learns from those actions, and applies those insights to speed up future issue resolution.

Over 100,000 businesses already use Zoho Desk globally, and the company expects this AI-driven automation to help them manage larger support volumes without increasing costs or staff load.

The company has also upgraded Zoho Sign, its secure digital signature platform, with Agreement Intelligence, a tool that lets users draft, review, and query contracts directly through Ask Zia. By removing the need for third-party tools, Zoho is positioning itself as a full-stack alternative for contract management within its ecosystem.

Similarly, in the human resources category, Zoho Recruit gets a significant upgrade. The platform now uses AI to enhance candidate screening, matching, and testing. The Zia Candidate and Job Match features analyse both resumes and job descriptions to ensure stronger alignment between roles and applicants.

For recruiters, the highlight is the new AI-Assisted Assessment Generation feature. It automatically creates tailored evaluation tests for different job roles, reducing the administrative overhead in talent acquisition. This saves time and promotes fairer, data-driven hiring decisions.

While the technology behind Zoho’s agentic AI is sophisticated, the company’s strategy is deceptively simple: make powerful AI available to everyone without the price tag or complexity that often accompanies it.

By embedding these features natively into its software, Zoho sidesteps a growing industry problem, the over-reliance on expensive third-party AI integrations. This approach also ensures that businesses maintain control over their data, a key advantage for companies operating in regions with evolving privacy regulations.

Zoho’s decision to offer these upgrades for free could also pressure competitors to rethink their pricing strategies. Many enterprise software vendors currently gatekeep advanced AI features behind premium tiers or add-on subscriptions. Zoho’s contrasting approach could redefine market expectations around what “AI for business” should cost.

As Ogundare noted, the company’s goal is to make AI “practical, affordable, and impactful” across industries. With over 55 integrated applications spanning CRM, finance, operations, and collaboration, Zoho is positioning its agentic AI as a unifying layer that empowers employees to do more, without needing to understand how AI works underneath.

For businesses in Africa and beyond, this could mark a turning point in AI adoption, one where the promise of automation and intelligence is no longer limited by budget or technical expertise.