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Zoho Corporation Expands AI Capabilities with New Zia Agents and Studio

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Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, today expands the scope of Zia with the announcement of Zia Agents, Agent Studio, and Agent Marketplace. Together, these solutions empower enterprises to access, build, and distribute intelligent, autonomous digital agents across their organisations.

Zoho

Beginning today, Zoho and ManageEngine will be previewing pre-built, task-specific Zia Agents, which will deploy across Zoho Corporation’s combined portfolio of 100+ products in the coming weeks.

“The speed of disruption and quality of innovation we’re seeing in our industry right now has encouraged me to focus on my passion area, technology. I will devote more time to hands-on technical work for the company, spearheading several deep R&D initiatives, beginning with AI,” said Sridhar Vembu, Zoho Corporation’s Co-founder and Chief Scientist. “Utilising Zoho’s deep engineering expertise, its own data centres, and shared data model, we will develop powerful and usable solutions that drive customer value while retaining our commitment to customer flexibility and data privacy.”

Zoho Corporation’s in-house AI has evolved over the past decade from proactive to prescriptive to generative to agentic:

Zia: Launched in 2015, Zia is Zoho Corporation’s foundational AI, facilitating all intelligent and contextual actions across the company’s ecosystem of apps. Zia possesses a vast and diverse skillset. New skills are being implemented regularly to boost customer experience and drive productivity.

Ask Zia: Launched in 2018, Ask Zia has developed into a system-wide conversational assistant that helps employees work smarter and accomplish tasks more effectively. For example, an account manager can review a report of customers at risk of churn, summarise the outcomes of each customer’s recent interactions, filter and summarise helpdesk tickets, analyse trends in their industry, and reach out to that customer for a meeting based on the employee’s upcoming travel schedule, without leaving the Ask Zia interface. Ask Zia is powered by Zoho’s unified data platform and will be contextually embedded across all applications.

Zia Agents: Today, Zoho Corporation has previewed some of the several dozens of pre-built Zia Agents that will be rolled out in the coming months, including an Account Manager Agent, SDR Agent, HR Agent, Customer Support Agent, IT Help Desk Agent, and a SalesCoach Agent. For customers, partners, and developers looking to create their own agents, Zoho is launching Zia Agent Studio, allowing them to build and deploy customised agents with inherited skillsets, which can then be distributed through Zoho’s Agent Marketplace.

Zia Agent Studio: Offering no-code and low-code experiences, Zia Agent Studio enables users to build autonomous agents with skills relevant to their specific needs. Zia Agent Studio users can also access a wide range of pre-existing Zia Skills, tools from across the Zoho ecosystem, data from a unified data platform, and a range of language models. These can be agents within a function (like an SDR agent or email support agent) or natively cross-functional agents (like an RFP agent or loan approval agent).

They can be deployed on any Zoho application and summoned using Ask Zia. Moving forward, Zia Agents will be deployable in any third-party application as well. Additionally, Zia Agents with complementary skillsets can be combined using Zia Agent Studio, creating a single agent capable of cross-functional work.

Agent Marketplace: Agents created using Zia Agent Studio can be published in the Agent Marketplace. Zoho Corporation will offer a pre-built roster of agents, while the company’s ecosystem of partners and developers can build and distribute specialised AI agents through the marketplace, which can be reused and instantly deployed by organisations.

Organisational Differentiation

Today’s announcement follows record growth for Zoho Corporation, which onboarded 110,000 new customers globally in 2024. With over 850,000 customers globally in diverse industries, using a range of tools across Zoho and ManageEngine, Zoho Corporation’s AI solutions are informed by a vast range of functional data. This is a core differentiator for the company, putting it in a unique position to serve businesses with cutting-edge technology.

Technological Differentiation

Zoho Corporation’s distinct technological breadth and depth is a fundamental differentiator, particularly in AI development and deployment. Leveraging its shared data model, owned and managed tech stack, including global data centres, and a broad application portfolio, Zoho Corporation’s highly secure, privacy-compliant, usable, capable, and deeply knowledgeable AI agents deliver superior technology at a high value to its growing customer base.

Availability

These capabilities will begin to roll out to a limited set of customers, which will expand monthly.


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Ugo Onwuaso is an ICT enthusiast. He believes technology should be used for general good. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the Lagos state University. Dear Reader, Your support matters. But we believe that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. That is why, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and finance and how they affect lives. Our incisive and analytical view of how technology news affects the daily life help individuals and organizations make up their minds. Quality journalism costs money. Today, we're asking that you support us to do more. Kindly support our effort to deliver technology and finance journalism to everyone in the world. Donate as little as N1,000. Bank transfers can be made to: UBA Plc 1017156876 Communication Week Media Ltd

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Telcos Threaten to Disconnect Banks over Misinformation on New USSD Charges

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Telecommunication companies have threatened to withdraw their Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD), services from banks over what they called misinformation.

Telcos Threaten to Disconnect Banks over Misinformation on New USSD Charges

MTN Nigeria, Airtel, Globacom and 9Mobile- the  telcos disclosed that the banks’ notice to their customers on the new billing system and airtime deductions for USSD services was misleading.

Also, Association of Licensed Telecom Operators of Nigeria (ALTON) also denied that the directive was from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC).

USSD is done via shortcodes on mobile phones and allows bank customers to make transactions in places with limited or no internet service.

Recall that banks earlier this week claimed that NCC has directed them to begin charging them from their airtime rather than from customers’ accounts.

The notice from the banks read in part: “In line with the directive of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), please be informed that effective June 3, 2025, charges for USSD banking services will no longer be deducted from your bank account.

“Going forward, these charges will be deducted directly from your mobile airtime balance in accordance with the NCC’s End-User Billing (EUB) model.

“Under this new billing structure, each USSD session will attract a charge of ?6.98 per 120 seconds, which will be billed by your mobile network operator.

“You will receive a consent prompt at the start of each session, and airtime will only be deducted upon your confirmation and availability of the bank to fulfil this service.

“If you do not wish to continue using USSD banking under this new model, you may choose to discontinue use of the USSD channel.”

Reacting, ALTON, umbrella body of telecom operators in Nigeria, said the banks’ notice is a gross misinformation deliberately hatched to suit their selfish interests.

Hence they threatened to withdraw network support to the banks’ USSD services.

Engr Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of ALTON  told Vanguard: ” I don’t understand why the banks are twisting agreements and distorting information just to favour their selfish interests. In the first place, the information wasn’t a directive from the NCC but a joint regulatory agreement between the NCC and the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN witnessed by the telcos and the banks. The agreement was that if the banks finally cleared all USSD debts owed to the telcos by June 2, 2025, they are free to migrate to the end-user billing method, so long as the model of migration is transparent and agreed upon by the telcos.

“The reason for that clause was because the telcos insisted that the process of migration is such that will not allow a customer to be billed twice; in other words, that a subscriber would not have his airtime deducted and also have his or her money deducted for same services from his or her bank account.

” As we speak, some of the banks have cleared their debts, but the majority are yet to do so. So, even if all the modalities of migrating to end-user billing have been perfectly carried out, the implementation cannot even begin because the banks are yet to clear the USSD debt owed to the telcos.

“Our position now is that if that is the way the banks want to treat the agreement, we may withdraw support for their USSD services. It is not a must-have. They can do without it. But, they should clear the debts as agreed,” he added.

 


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MTN Nigeria Plans N900Bn in Service Upgrade

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MTN Nigeria has announced plans to embark on a massive capital expenditure (CAPEX) drive in 2025, committing nearly N900 billion to significantly enhance network service quality across Nigeria.

MTN Nigeria Plans N900Bn in Service Upgrade

Dr. Karl Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria,

The substantial investment, more than double the combined CAPEX of approximately N440 billion spent in 2023 and 2024, underscored MTN’s aggressive strategy to address persistent service quality issues and meet growing customer and regulatory expectations.

Dr. Karl Toriola, CEO, MTN Nigeria, detailed this unprecedented financial commitment during a recent interview on Arise TV, emphasizing that improving service quality is the company’s paramount message for the year.

He highlighted a clear understanding and expectation from both the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) and security agencies for improved network quality.

A primary focus of this increased CAPEX will be on putting additional capacity in a city like Lagos, particularly in Abuja, where you have a lot of buildings coming up, you need additional sites because there are coverage issues.

Beyond these critical urban centers, the investment aims to bolster network resilience and ensure power stability for its infrastructure nationwide.

This includes proactively addressing site outages by ensuring timely payment for operational necessities such as diesel for generators, a persistent challenge in the Nigerian operating environment.

Toriola outlined a comprehensive upgrade process, which involves placing orders formally, opening letters of credit, and then the equipment gets shipped in and installed.

He added that MTN will be acquiring new sites and laying fiber to the base station to create better stability” where necessary.

While the immediate CAPEX is geared towards improving existing service quality and capacity, this investment aligns with MTN’s broader goals of enhancing financial inclusion in underserved rural areas, suggesting a long-term vision for network expansion and service improvement that extends beyond metropolitan areas.

Subscribers can anticipate tangible improvements in service quality, with a significant improvement in quality of service expected by the end of the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 2025, according to Toriola.

“This year is all going to be about capital expenditure on an aggressive basis to fix quality of service issues (and) meet both the regulators’ and the public’s expectations,” he affirmed, reiterating MTN’s steadfast focus on customer experience through substantial capital investment.

 


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Telecom Regulators in Africa Chart New Course for a Data-driven Future

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Telecom regulators and industry leaders from across the Middle East and Africa gathered in Cairo last week to chart a data-driven future for the region.

In a region where digital transformation is accelerating at unprecedented speed, connectivity intelligence firm, Ookla and Egypt’s National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) joined forces to organise the Telecommunications Regulatory Summit

Themed ‘Harnessing Data and Technology for Superior QoS’, the summit focused on how data, particularly crowdsourced insights, can transform regulatory strategies across the region.

The summit attracted stakeholders from over 30 countries, including delegates from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and World Broadband Association (WBBA), who engaged in high-level discussions on optimising network performance and accelerating digital inclusion.

Karim Yaici, lead industry analyst for the Middle East and Africa at Ookla, said the event set the tone for the growing value of data-driven decision-making.

“Access to and the use of crowdsourced data contribute to making more informed decisions, fostering transparency and ensuring that citizens in the MEA region benefit from high-quality, accessible and affordable connectivity,” he said.

The experts underlined that crowdsourced data is becoming a critical complement to traditional regulatory methods.

They agreed that it helps identify service gaps, prioritise infrastructure investments, and drive innovation.

With broadband speeds now closely tied to GDP growth and productivity, accurate performance data is seen as key to socio-economic advancement.

Dr. Hossam Abdel-Mawla, vice-president of technical affairs and quality of service at NTRA, stressed that the summit was pivotal in fostering regional collaboration.

“By actively sharing best practices and exploring innovative data-driven strategies, we are shaping a future where telecom regulations ensure digital inclusion and economic growth across the region,” he said.

In a key session, Ahmed Nabawy, director of client services at Ookla, presented findings on 5G performance in Egypt and Tunisia.

He demonstrated how Ookla’s unified data platform, powered by AI, enables operators to analyse 5G-capable device density and prioritise high-impact rollout areas.

The summit also explored the shift from conventional network quality metrics to more user-centric Quality of Experience models. These advanced analytics tools promise to enhance transparency, improve accountability, and ultimately deliver better connectivity experiences for all.

 


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