Latest news with #SridharVembu
Mint
6 hours ago
- Business
- Mint
Zoho Zia LLM launched with speech-to-text models and AI agent marketplace: All you need to know
Zoho Corporation has announced a major expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, including its own large language models (Zia LLM), speech-to-text systems for English and Hindi, and new AI-powered tools to help businesses automate tasks. These tools are being introduced to improve everyday work across different departments like sales, customer support, and data analysis. Sridhar Vembu, Chief Scientist at Zoho, shared the news on X, saying, 'Our big AI announcement today. First, Zia LLM with 3 completely home-grown models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, that focus on various business use cases. Second, two completely home grown automatic speech to text models for English and Hindi, optimised to perform with high accuracy in relatively modest hardware.' 'We will support other Indian languages over time. Third, AI Agent Studio and a variety of pre-built agents that rely on a choice of open source or commercial LLM APIs, and customers can choose the LLMs they want to use. Fourth, Zoho MCP Server for interoperability,' added Vembu. The Zia LLM has been developed completely in-house using NVIDIA's AI platform. The models were trained with real business tasks in mind, such as summarising reports, extracting data, answering questions, and writing code. The three different model sizes allow Zoho to match the right AI power to the right job. Zoho has also launched two speech recognition models for converting spoken English and Hindi into text. These are designed to work well even on devices with limited computing power, while still delivering accurate results. More Indian and European languages will be added in the future. To help companies use AI more easily, Zoho introduced Zia Agent Studio, a tool that allows users to create their own AI assistants (agents) without coding. These agents can carry out tasks automatically, respond to customer queries, or help teams with analysis. Over 700 built-in actions are available across Zoho's product suite. The Agent Marketplace, now live within Zoho's platform, offers more than 25 pre-made AI agents. These include: Customer Service Agent: Handles and routes customer support requests. Candidate Screener: Ranks job applicants based on required skills and experience. Deal Analyser: Reviews sales deals and suggests next steps. Revenue Growth Specialist: Identifies ways to upsell and cross-sell to customers. Developers and partners will also be able to build their own agents and share them on the Marketplace soon. Another part of the announcement is the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server, which allows AI agents to access actions and data across more than 15 Zoho apps. This is meant to help different AI systems work together while respecting user privacy and permission settings. These new AI tools are currently being tested by early access users. General availability is expected by the end of 2025. Pricing will be shared closer to the full launch. Zoho said that its AI systems are not trained on customer data and are designed with privacy in mind. The company plans to improve its AI tools further, by increasing model sizes, adding support for more languages, and introducing new types of models that can reason and solve more complex problems.
Indian Express
6 hours ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Zoho unveils foundational LLM ‘Zia', alongside enterprise AI agents and speech recognition tech
Zoho has jumped into the AI race with its first proprietary large language model (LLM) that is designed for enterprise use cases such as structured data extraction, summarisation, code generation, and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). Zia LLM was built completely in-house by leveraging NVIDIA's AI accelerated computing platform, the enterprise software company said in a press release on Thursday, July 17. The LLM is made up of three underlying base models in varying sizes: 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters. The parameter count of an AI model reflects its capacity to learn and generate complex responses. Each of the models were 'separately trained' and 'optimised for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market,' as per Zoho. Our big AI announcement today. First, Zia LLM with 3 completely home-grown models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, that focus on various business use cases. Second, two completely home grown automatic speech to text models for English and Hindi, optimised… — Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) July 17, 2025 The move comes months after the company abandoned its $700 million plan to foray into chip manufacturing after struggling to find the right technology partner to aid in the complex chip-making processes. It also comes at a time when the Indian government is looking to develop a domestic LLM of its own. The IT Ministry has short-listed four startups, Sarvam AI, Soket AI Labs, and to build a foundational AI model under the Rs 10,300 crore-IndiaAI mission. 'Today's announcement emphasizes Zoho's longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities, and value. Because Zoho's AI initiatives are developed internally, we are able to provide customers with cutting-edge tool sets without compromising data privacy and organisational flexibility, democratising the latest technology on a global scale,' Mani Vembu, CEO of Zoho, said in a statement. Zia LLM is currently undergoing internal testing and will be available to customers in the coming months. It will be deployed across Zoho's data centres in the US, India, and Europe, the company said. It has not revealed the pricing of these AI offerings. Aside from its in-house LLM, Zoho also announced it has developed two new Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models capable of converting speech to text using AI. It currently only works for English and Hindi, with support for additional languages coming in the future. In terms of performance, Zoho said that the ASR models scored 75 per cent better than comparable models across standard benchmarks. It also said the data of customers using Zia LLM will be stored on Zoho servers and will not be sent to external AI cloud providers. Zoho is further rolling out over 25 ready-to-deploy AI-powered agents capable of undertaking various business activities and handling relevant actions related to sales development, customer support, account management, revenue growth, deal analysis, and candidate screening. These pre-built AI agents can be deployed by customers using Zoho's Agent Marketplace. It has also upgraded its AI agent building platform called Zia Agent Studio, launched earlier this year, to include ready-made access to over 700 actions across Zoho's products. In addition, Zoho has adopted the model context protocol (MCP) which lets customers tap into third-party AI agents as well. Moving forward, Zoho plans to develop an AI reasoning model along with expanding the available languages used by its speech-to-text models.
Time of India
12 hours ago
- Business
- Time of India
'Study China like a diligent student not American B-schools': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu says Indian intellectuals 'teaching nonsense'
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu urges India to emulate China's industrial transformation, criticizing the dominance of American business school ideologies in the Indian corporate world. He slammed Indian intellectuals for promoting consumerism among the poor, advocating instead for prioritizing production and job creation. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads India should study China like a diligent student and not the American business schools Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu . The enterpreneur today took to social media platform X to also slam Indian intellectual charlatans for 'teaching nonsense'He said the miracle of China's transformation from the "cheap labor, cheap goods" label to world-leading tech-driven industrial prowess is dawning on America's elite."We in India must study China like a diligent student. Unfortunately the ideas that dominate the Indian corporate world are still mostly from American business schools (and often Indian professors!)," Vembu wrote."It is those business schools that caused the decline of American prowess by teaching spurious doctrines like "shareholder value". The Chinese (like the Japanese before them) had no fascination with American business schools," Vembu added in the scatching remarks on Indian teachers, he wrote, "We have had intellectual charlatans like C K Prahalad teaching nonsense like "wealth at the bottom of the pyramid" i.e, big companies should sell to the poorest people."Vembu argued that 'the only wealth at the bottom of the pyramid comes from transforming the poorest people into *producers* not consumers, first'."Yet this basic intellectual confusion between production and consumption still persists. Notice the "financial inclusion" language we often hear - all it amounts to in practise in rural India is "let's push even more debt to people who are already drowing in debt"," he to the Zoho founder, poor Indians needs jobs."What our poor citizens need is the opportunity for productive work, first and foremost: jobs, jobs, jobs. Consumption only after production. Expense only after income," he wrote in the also said that bad philosophy is extremely costly to people and nations. "China recovered from Mao's disastrous philosophy. We can recover from Prahalad but we must first understand why that is wrong. I am planning an industrial pilgrimage to China soon," he added in the post.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
‘Socialism failed spectacularly in India': Zoho's Sridhar Vembu on why the word should be removed from Constitution
Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has questioned the relevance of socialism in India's Constitution, advocating for its removal. This follows similar calls from RSS figures for a national debate on the inclusion of 'socialist' and 'secular' in the Preamble, added during the Emergency. However, the Supreme Court has reaffirmed secularism as a core part of the Constitution's basic structure. Disclaimer Statement: This content is authored by a 3rd party. The views expressed here are that of the respective authors/ entities and do not represent the views of Economic Times (ET). ET does not guarantee, vouch for or endorse any of its contents nor is responsible for them in any manner whatsoever. Please take all steps necessary to ascertain that any information and content provided is correct, updated, and verified. ET hereby disclaims any and all warranties, express or implied, relating to the report and any content therein. More
Time of India
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Time of India
Follow Singapore: Zoho's Sridhar Vembu shares how making cars costlier by Rs 67 lakh can solve Bengaluru-like traffic woes
Check full text here — svembu (@svembu) Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Highlighting the urgent need for sustainable urban planning in India, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu pointed to Singapore as a model for balancing livability and mobility. He noted that despite being one of the most advanced economies and most livable cities in the world, Singapore relies heavily on public transport and strictly limits private car ownership through its Certificate of Entitlement (COE) system—where the certificate alone can cost over SGD 100,000, excluding the vehicle price. The response was in reply to BJP MP Tejasvi Surya's post on Rs 17,780 crore project to build a 16-kilometre road tunnel under Bengaluru, aiming to reduce travel time between Bengaluru's northern and southern parts.I want to add that Singapore, one of the most advanced economies in the world and one of the most livable cities, relies extensively on public transport. Singapore also limits the number of private cars through the mechanism of open market trading of Certificate of Entitlement (COE) needed to own a car and the certificate costs more than Singapore $100K (and the car price is on top of that). Indian cities are far more dense than Singapore. We have to build extensive public transport to make our cities livable. It can be done."We can build more cities and developed small cities in big cities, we have too many small cities which can be upgraded. We just need to move people from big cities to small cities and then villages," said one user."Sir, will it be acceptable to Indian public if something like Singapore model of private car ownership is implemented in India? May be the question to ask is, does our policy makers think about it in first place?" said another proposed tunnel will run from Esteem Mall in Hebbal Junction to Central Silk Board Junction in HSR Layout. According to officials, the tunnel is expected to bring down travel time from around 60 minutes to 20–25 minutes. It will be constructed using eight Tunnel Boring Machines (TBMs) at a depth of 30 work will be divided into two equal phases:Phase 1: Esteem Mall to Seshadri RoadPhase 2: Seshadri Road to Silk Board JunctionThe tunnel will include two- or three-lane entry and exit points at various locations. Construction is likely to take 26 months, followed by 12 more months for civil and related work.
