Zoho launches Zia Chat for businesses, enters vertical SaaS space with seven applications

Zia chat will give businesses a unified interface for navigating and processing information spread across different systems.

Zoho today hosted a special event at its headquarters in Chennai wherein it announced the launch of Zia Chat, which is an AI-powered conversational interface that is designed to let users access information and perform tasks across business applications from a single interface. In addition to this, the company also announced its entry into the vertical SaaS market, with seven industry-focused offerings spanning sectors including retail, automotive, BFSI, healthcare, education, real estate and restaurants. Here are the details.

Zoho launches Zia Chat for businesses

Zoho launched Zia Chat at its headquarters in Chennai today. (Shweta Ganjoo / HT)

By Shweta Ganjoo

Shweta Ganjoo is a Chief Content Producer at HT Tech. She has over 10 years of experience covering technology, during which time she has focused on consumer tech devices, AI, social media, gadgets, and tech policy, delivering authoritative and reader-focused insights across India’s fast-evolving digital ecosystem.

She began her career in the early 2010s, building a strong foundation in digital-first reporting as India’s tech landscape rapidly expanded. Over the years, she has worked with leading media organizations including India Today Tech, Indian Express Group, and Techlusive, where she played a key role in scaling editorial content and audience engagement. At HT Tech, she drives product recommendation coverage, combining newsroom leadership with hands-on reporting experience.

Her expertise spans smartphones, wearables, smart home devices, AI, and social media ecosystems, along with regulatory developments shaping the tech industry. Shweta is known for her analytical approach to product reviews and news coverage, grounded in hands-on testing and real-world usability. She has conducted industry interviews, tracked emerging tech trends, and produced research-backed stories using verified sources and expert inputs. She holds a masters in Mass Communication, which complements her professional experience in digital journalism and content strategy, and aligns with her academic background in technology. Shweta follows a reader-first editorial philosophy, prioritising accuracy, transparency, and fact-checked reporting to deliver reliable, insightful, and practical insights.

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As mentioned before, Zoho launched its AI-based interface called Zia Chat today. This AI interface is designed to address what co-founder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu describes as an “interface crisis”, wherein employees spend more time navigating multiple applications and searching for information spread across different systems.

Zoho launches Zia Chat for businesses.

Zoho says that Zia Chat is built into the company’s ecosystem and it allows users to search for information, analyse business data, generate reports and presentations, draft emails, create tasks and carry out other actions through natural-language conversations. It can also connect information across applications based on the user's existing permissions.

Besides this, Zia Chat can also extend beyond Zoho applications through Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations. This allows businesses to bring information and capabilities from other systems into the same conversational experience. For the unversed, MCP integrations let developers build one standard connection that is compatible with different AI applications instead of writing code for every single app or API. Think of it like Gemini accessing all your authorised apps for simplifying your workflow and improving overall productivity. Only in this case, Zia Chat will do this for businesses.

Zoho says that Zia Chat is model-agnostic. This will enable organisations to choose the large language models (LLMs) powering their AI experience. The company has also built permission controls into the system, which means Zia Chat can only access information and perform actions that the user is authorised to access.

As far as availability is concerned, Zoho says that Zia Chat will be available for early access in a month. However, users will be able to access it only in English under a BYOK model. Zoho gradually plans to expand it more languages in the future.

Zoho enters vertical SaaS industry.

Zoho enters vertical SaaS with seven industry-focused apps

In addition to launching Zia Chat, Zoho also announced its entry into vertical SaaS (software as a service). The company is initially targeting seven sectors, which includes retail, automotive, BFSI, healthcare, education, real estate and restaurants.

For retail, Zoho has introduced Zoho RetailIQ, which is a CRM (customer relationship management) system designed for physical retailers. It brings customer profiles, campaigns, loyalty and feedback into a retail-focused workflow and can connect with systems such as Zoho POS, Zoho ERP and Zoho Desk.

In automotive, the company has launched Zoho AutoDMS, which is aimed at dealer management, connecting areas such as sales, service, spares, warranty and dealer operations.

For BFSI, Zoho has launched Zoho LOS, which is a loan origination system that digitises the entire lending journey, from application and verification to decisioning and disbursement, on a single platform. This SaaS aims to help financial institutions accelerate loan processing, enable consistent decision-making, maintain compliance, and gain end-to-end visibility across origination.

In healthcare, the company has launched Zoho MedScribe, which is positioned as an AI-native, ABDM-compliant clinical documentation solution. It can convert clinician conversations into structured records and supports contextual patient queries, voice-to-text and multilingual capabilities.

In education, the company has introduced Zoho Campus, which targets schools, colleges and universities by bringing admissions, fees, attendance, timetables, assignments and staff records onto a common platform.

For real estate, Zoho's offering focuses on workflows covering lead capture, property matching, follow-ups, site visits and deal closure. Meanwhile, Zoho POS for Restaurants is designed for restaurant operations, including omnichannel orders, table service, kitchen operations, inventory and recipe management. Zoho said restaurants billing up to ₹12 lakh annually can use the platform for free.

The company plans to expand its vertical SaaS portfolio into additional industries over time.