Tag: Zoho

Global technology firm, Zoho, has announced a 75% growth in its Nigerian customer base in 2024, as the country emerges as one of its strongest markets in Africa. 

The company also unveiled a groundbreaking study on responsible artificial intelligence (AI) adoption, which positions Nigerian businesses as global leaders in balancing AI innovation with strong privacy safeguards.

The report, titled The AI Privacy Equation: The Nigerian Model of Responsible AI Adoption, was conducted by Arion Research on behalf of Zoho and released during Zoholics Nigeria, the company’s annual user conference held in Lagos on Monday, September 8.

According to the report, 93% of Nigerian organisations have already embarked on their AI journey, with over half moving beyond experimentation into operational deployment. 

Read Also: Zoho unveils Zia Hubs to harness insights from unstructured business data

Notably, 84% reported strengthening their privacy measures since adopting AI, with 94% of organisations now maintaining a dedicated privacy officer or team, well above global averages.

Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head of Zoho Nigeria, said the study underscores the country’s leadership in responsible AI use. “The latest study around AI and Privacy proves that Nigerian businesses are leading the way in responsible AI adoption, as they temper the new technology with privacy measures. This mirrors Zoho’s philosophy of building contextual and privacy-first AI models that deliver tangible benefits,” he stated.

The research, which surveyed 386 Nigerian business leaders, also revealed that companies are investing heavily in governance, with 40% allocating more than 30% of their IT budgets to privacy protection. 

The financial sector was identified as the pioneer in integrating AI responsibly, particularly in customer service automation, software development, and marketing optimisation.

Despite progress, challenges remain. Limited technical expertise (37%) and privacy concerns (35%) were cited as major barriers. However, Nigerian organisations are prioritising AI upskilling, with investments in data analysis, AI literacy, and prompt engineering skills.

Zoho noted that its strong Nigerian growth is driven by increasing demand for unified, scalable business solutions. Products such as Zoho Workplace, Books, Campaigns, and Zoho One are leading adoption across key sectors including IT services, finance, energy, manufacturing, real estate, media, education, and retail.

Industry analysts say the Nigerian model of AI adoption—led by executive commitment, privacy-by-design principles, regulatory awareness, and customer-centric innovation—offers a blueprint for sustainable digital transformation globally.

Zoho, a global technology company, today launched Zia Hubs, a solution within Zoho WorkDrive that brings new forms of unstructured business data into the company’s broad portfolio of applications and AI services. Using Zia Hubs, organisations can now present any type of business content to Zoho’s powerful capabilities and services—including agentic AI, comprehensive analysis, and accurate, unified search—regardless of file format or structure.

“According to IDC, 80 percent of business data is unstructured,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria. “Most unstructured data is text-based, meaning pertinent information lives within email conversations, social media posts, word processor documents, or audio and video transcripts. With Zia Hubs built into the full product suite, Zoho can provide customers with a deeper integration than any comparable software platform and nearly limitless potential uses for their data.”

Deeper Intelligence Accessing More Customer Data

Launching as part of Zoho WorkDrive, Zia Hubs brings content intelligence to the company’s unified content management and collaboration platform. Designed with a high level of user control over what content AI is allowed to access, Zia Hubs enables users to organise project or task-specific content into dedicated hubs within WorkDrive. Each hub serves as a focused space where Zia, Zoho’s flagship AI, can understand and act on the content stored within. This includes a wide range of formats such as PDFs, documents, videos, and audio files.

Zia Hubs automatically organises uploaded content by grouping related information—such as section headings, supporting text, and visuals—to preserve context. For video and audio files, Zia generates transcripts and links key moments to relevant topics, making it easier to pinpoint exactly where something was said.

With Zia Hubs, users can surface the most relevant answers when asked a question, even across different content formats. Each response includes clear citations that link back to the original content, whether it is a document, spreadsheet, image, or a specific moment in an audio or video file.

Read Also: Zoho enhances creator with AI for simplified App Development

Organisations can also create custom workflows with Zoho Flow, automating document storage processes for particular projects or specific teams. This ensures that Zia always has access to the latest necessary documents automatically.

Furthermore, content from third-party software—such as Docusign PDFs, RingCentral call logs, Zoom video files—are all readable by Zia, and can be automatically placed into a hub by building a workflow with Zoho Flow.

From Intelligent Content to Intelligent Action with Zia

Zia Hubs is a foundational element of Zoho’s long-term AI strategy. It lays the groundwork for a future where intelligent agents can act contextually on content across the company’s entire product suite. With full ownership of its technology stack spanning more than 55 products, Zoho is uniquely positioned to help organisations unlock deeper value from their business content compared to competitors.

Potential use cases for Zia Hubs include: a legal team’s content hub hosting a case’s relevant files: court files, correspondence, and research, allowing a lawyer to have Zia provide summaries with citations without having to manually scan lengthy files to gain insights; a company’s support center placing call logs into a hub, then querying Zia to identify trends, like, “Have we received an increase in calls regarding specific issues?”

Future updates to Zia Hubs will enable it to identify structured information within unstructured files and trigger specialised agents tailored to specific business needs. This will further establish Zia Hubs as the central content intelligence layer that activates AI-native workflows across the full Zoho ecosystem.

Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, has expanded its customer experience (CX) platform with powerful new AI and workflow orchestration features, driven by its in-house AI engine, Zia. These innovations are designed to make CRM more accessible across organisations, not just for sales teams.

“Many people across departments need access to customer information, yet CRMs have traditionally been limited to sales,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria. “With CRM for Everyone, we’re democratising access and simplifying system use through Zia’s capabilities. Anyone can now create reports, workflows, or even redesign their CRM interface using simple prompts.”

CRM for Everyone is now generally available globally, with enhanced Zia capabilities and new features like Connected Records and Connected Workflows.

Zia Capabilities Deepen CRM Power

The platform now features several agentic AI capabilities through Zia. Users can issue natural language prompts to generate reports instantly, with the ability to review, pause, and edit in real time. Zia also enables custom module creation using plain language, allowing non-technical users to set up field types, permissions, and module structures effortlessly. Creating workflows is similarly simplified – Zia acts on behalf of the user to automate tasks. Additionally, a unique “Image to Canvas” tool lets users convert images into functional design elements within the CRM interface, enhancing visual customisation.

Improving Customer Experience with CRM for Everyone

CRM for Everyone introduces Connected Records and Connected Workflows, and is now available globally. Connected Records automatically link tasks and data across departments, ensuring continuity throughout the customer journey. Connected Workflows orchestrate tasks across multiple teams, enabling sales, marketing, onboarding, account management, finance, and legal departments to stay aligned with seamless access to contextual information. This ensures customers receive consistent experiences at every interaction point.

Availability and Pricing

AI capabilities are included in licence costs, unless stated otherwise. Team user licences (non-sales CRM users) start at NGN 4300/per user/month on all paid editions of Zoho CRM.

Zoho’s AI Commitment

Zoho designs its AI with customer privacy and value in mind. Zia’s models—contextual, assistive, and agentic—are not trained on consumer data and retain no customer information. Zoho delivers useful, cost-efficient AI tools without inflating customer expenses.

Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, today announced the launch of Projects Plus, a flexible, collaborative new platform providing data and intelligence-driven project management for mid-sized and large organisations. Through native integration of four key Zoho applications—Projects, WorkDrive, Analytics, and Sprints—Projects Plus enables asynchronous collaboration, seamless file management, real-time business intelligence, and Agile or Waterfall workflows.

Zoho Projects has seen rapid growth, doubling its revenue in 2024, with 55% of new users migrating from Microsoft Projects and JIRA. Projects Plus builds on this success by focussing on better data democratisation, AI-powered insights, hybrid project management, and collaborative work management. As 18% of enterprise customers deployed both Zoho Projects and Zoho Analytics, Projects Plus directly addresses these needs by consolidating the two, and more, into a singular, efficient solution.

“The surge in digitalisation across the nation and the hybrid work culture have necessitated project management tools to be well ingrained in the overall software architecture of an organisation. With Projects Plus, which can be easily customised and integrated with other apps, we have brought together key tools like analytics, file management and collaboration, and the option to use blended project management methodologies, creating a value-packed offering not yet available in the market. Furthermore, Projects Plus synthesises the latest AI-driven tools, data-first analytics, and privacy-focused protections into software that anticipates the evolving needs of international enterprise organisations, expanding Zoho’s global reach,” said Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria.

Business Intelligence Leading to Project Democratisation 

The shift toward Data-Driven Project Management (DDPM) is transforming how organisations make decisions. Instead of relying on intuition, businesses can now leverage real-time data and analytics to drive efficiency. Projects Plus captures insights across multiple dimensions—including time tracking, budgeting, task completion, and deliverability metrics—helping teams make smarter, data-backed decisions.

Predictive analysis plays a crucial role in this approach, using historical data to forecast risks, estimate project timelines, and anticipate resource needs. By analysing past trends, businesses can proactively plan and mitigate risks before they impact project success. Progress tracking has also evolved beyond traditional static tools like Gantt charts. With real-time dashboards, project managers now have dynamic, up-to-date insights that provide a comprehensive view of project status, allowing them to identify and address bottlenecks as they arise.

Read Also: Zoho to Leverage NVIDIA NeMo to build LLMs

Additionally, quality control analytics ensure that every stage of a project meets predefined standards. By continuously monitoring data related to project deliverables, businesses can uphold high-quality outcomes, reducing errors and inefficiencies throughout the project lifecycle. With these enhanced analytical capabilities, Projects Plus enables organisations to shift from reactive project management to a more strategic, data-driven approach that improves execution and results.

Projects Plus integrates Zia, Zoho’s AI engine, to automate complex data analysis and provide predictive insights, helping project managers focus on strategic leadership. By analysing project performance data, businesses can identify inefficiencies and optimise processes, streamlining workflows to improve productivity. AI-powered insights also enable smarter resource allocation by identifying where resources are being underutilised or overburdened. This ensures that the right people are assigned to the right tasks, maximising efficiency across teams.

Forecasting and planning are also significantly enhanced through AI-driven analysis. With more accurate predictions about project timelines, costs, and potential risks, organisations can make proactive adjustments to avoid delays and cost overruns. This results in better project outcomes, improved resource management, and higher overall efficiency.

Pricing and Availability

Projects Plus is available immediately and priced at NGN7200 per user each month, when billed annually—27% lower than combining Projects, Sprints, Workdrive and Analytics when purchased separately. For regional pricing, go to https://www.zoho.com/projectsplus/

Zoho Corporation, a global technology company headquartered in Chennai, announced today that it will be leveraging the NVIDIA AI accelerated computing platform – which includes NVIDIA NeMo, part of NVIDIA AI Enterprise software – to build and deploy its large language models (LLMs) in its SaaS applications. Once the LLMs are built and deployed, they will be available to Zoho Corporation’s 700,000+ customers across ManageEngine and Zoho.com globally. Over the past year, the company has invested more than USD 10 million in NVIDIA’s AI technology and GPUs, and plans to invest an additional USD 10 million in the coming year. The announcement was made during the NVIDIA AI Summit in Mumbai.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, Director of AI at Zoho Corporation, commented, “Many LLMs on the market today are designed for consumer use, offering limited value for businesses. At Zoho, our mission is to develop LLMs tailored specifically for a wide range of business use cases. Owning our entire tech stack, with products spanning various business functions, allows us to integrate the essential element that makes AI truly effective: context.”

Zoho prioritises user privacy from the outset to create models that are compliant with privacy regulations from the ground up, rather than retrofitting them later. Its goal is to help businesses realise ROI swiftly and effectively by leveraging the full stack of NVIDIA AI software and accelerated computing to increase throughput and reduce latency.

Read Also: Zoho launches customizable low-code IoT platform for efficiency, customer delight

Zoho has been building its own AI technology for over a decade and adding it contextually to its wide portfolio of over 100 products across its ManageEngine and Zoho divisions. Its approach to AI is multi-modal, geared towards deriving contextual intelligence that can help users make business decisions. The company is building narrow, small and medium language models, which are distinct from LLMs. This provides options for using different size models in order to provide better results across a variety of use cases. Relying on multiple models also means that businesses that do not have a large amount of data can still benefit from AI. Privacy is also a core tenet in Zoho’s AI strategy, and its LLM models will not be trained on customer data.

“The ability to choose from a range of AI model sizes empowers businesses to tailor their AI solutions precisely to their needs, balancing performance with cost-effectiveness,” said Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Asia South at NVIDIA. “With NVIDIA’s AI software and accelerated computing platform, Zoho is building a broad range of models to help serve the diverse needs of its business customers.”

Through this collaboration, Zoho will be accelerating its LLMs on the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform with NVIDIA Hopper GPUs, using the NVIDIA NeMo end-to-end platform for developing custom generative AI—including LLMs, multimodal, vision, and speech AI. Additionally, Zoho is testing NVIDIA TensorRT-LLM to optimise its LLMs for deployment, and has already seen a 60% increase in throughput and 35% reduction in latency compared with a previously used open-source framework. The company is also accelerating other workloads like speech-to-text on NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure.

 Zoho Corporation, a global technology company has announced the launch of Zoho IoT, a user-friendly and scalable low-code platform designed to build and deploy custom IoT solutions.

According to a statement by the company on Wednesday, September 25, Zoho IoT elevates the concept of connectivity by seamlessly collecting and managing IoT device data in real-time, offering businesses intelligent insights and streamlined operational analysis. Zoho IoT’s intuitive features empower organisations to automate processes and make data-driven decisions effortlessly, without extensive technical expertise.

“Zoho IoT fully integrates with Zoho’s existing suite of applications, providing enhanced visibility and control. Its compatibility with third-party hardware allows for quick integration into existing infrastructures, enabling businesses to scale rapidly as they grow. The platform is built with robust security measures, ensuring data privacy and compliance with global standards.”

A recent study by Kaspersky found that over 50% of companies have integrated Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) into their systems. Furthermore, 33% want to adopt these interconnected technologies in the next two years. Experts advise that business owners should invest in robust cybersecurity solutions to protect their infrastructure.

Zoho IoT features advanced AI capabilities, allowing business users to develop powerful custom solutions more efficiently. Leveraging Zoho IoT’s AI capabilities, businesses can transform data into actionable insights, predict system outages, identify anomalies or forecast trends, optimise operations, and enhance customer experiences.

Kehinde Ogundare, Country Head, Zoho Nigeria said: “The IoT landscape has long been dominated by developer-centric platforms and industry-specific solutions.

Read Also: Zoho announces 31 per cent growth

“Zoho IoT addresses this by offering full customisation and interoperability, making it easier for businesses to adopt and benefit from IoT. The platform goes beyond basic data collection—ensuring every data point is converted into actionable insights that drive organisational connectivity,” he said.

Speaking on industry-specific solutions the company said: “Zoho IoT efficiently gathers and manages data from IoT devices in real-time, providing businesses with valuable insights and streamlined operational analysis. Its user-friendly features enable organisations to automate processes and make informed, data-driven decisions without requiring extensive technical skills.

The platform’s AI capabilities convert data into actionable insights, allowing for the prediction of system outages, detection of anomalies, trend forecasting, operational optimization, and improved customer experiences.

“Zoho IoT integrates with Zoho’s existing suite of applications, providing enhanced visibility and control. Its compatibility with third-party hardware allows for quick integration into existing infrastructures, enabling businesses to scale rapidly as they grow. The platform is built with robust security measures, ensuring data privacy and compliance with global standards.

“Zoho IoT offers pre-built solutions for different industries, such as Industrial IoT (users can track and manage shop floor productivity and machine uptime while reducing maintenance and repairs of high capital assets), Smart Buildings (provides users a unified system to manage and monitor assets, tenants, energy, and facilities), Energy Management (users can control energy usage by monitoring consumption patterns and enabling efficiency measures).”

The platform also offers end-to-end capabilities and integrations with offerings like Point Solutions (for remote management and control, enabling operational visibility and allowing businesses to solve specific challenges such as gas monitoring, water leakage monitoring, and indoor air quality management) and Connected OEMs (businesses can boost efficiency, enable real-time data insights and remote monitoring with smart products and connected OEMs, providing it as a value-added service).