Zoho Just Built Its Own LLM—Here’s Why It Matters

Zoho launches its own large language model—Zia LLM—built in India, designed for business, and powered by privacy-first AI agents that redefine what digital employees can do. Zoho is taking a bold step into the AI future with the launch of its own large language model (LLM) and a suite of enterprise-ready AI agents, all developed in-house—not in Silicon Valley, but in India. In this conversation, Zoho executive Chandrasekhar “LSP” joins Your Tech Report to unpack what makes Zoho’s approach to AI different—and why it could reshape how businesses automate, analyze, and serve customers. With its own infrastructure, private data policies, and “no AI tax” pricing model, Zoho aims to give businesses control over their data, their automation, and their outcomes. LSP explains how Zoho’s custom-built LLMs are trained on licensed datasets, operate within customer firewalls, and are tailored to specific business contexts—unlike consumer LLMs from OpenAI or Google. We also dive into Zoho’s digital employee framework, the Zoho Directory’s access guardrails, and the new Zia agent marketplace, which enables developers to create and monetize AI agents. From speech recognition to interoperability across platforms, this episode offers a deep look into Zoho’s vision for AI—one grounded in privacy, performance, and purpose. 0:00 – Zoho’s Big AI Announcement 3:25 – Why Zoho Built Its Own LLM from Scratch 8:40 – Privacy by Design: No Data Sharing, No AI Tax 12:20 – Digital Employees vs Traditional Agents 16:10 – Zoho Directory & Enterprise Guardrails 21:15 – Zia Marketplace and Multi-Agent Workflows 27:10 – Speech Recognition and Low-Resource Language Support 31:00 – Staying Grounded Through the AI Hype 35:45 – Zoho’s Vision for Accessible, Affordable AI 38:00 – Zoholics Conference Preview #ZohoZia #AIPrivacy #LLM #DigitalEmployees #EnterpriseAI #YourTechReport #Zoholics Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices