Global business software company Zoho has unveiled new capabilities in its SMB tech portfolio designed to improve productivity, optimize revenue, and streamline operations for a wide range of small and medium sized business customers.
From keeping track of bricks-and-mortar customers to setting up online storefronts, from supporting every stage of the contract process to managing notes and ideas from a staff meeting, Zoho has released or enhanced many features and functions within its portfolio of business software tools – fuelled by integration with Zoho’s own in-house AI (artificial intelligence) engine.
And Zoho’s just announced partnership with Dell Technologies to leverage the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA is also part of the new fuel. The collaboration will support Zoho’s multimodal large language models (LLMs) and agentic AI tools, the companies said.
In this way, the company’s integrated software suite of more than 55 different apps have been “future-proofed” to help business owners stay focused on growth and new opportunities in an ever-changing business and technology environment.
Chandrashekar LSP, Managing Director of Zoho Canada
“Small businesses are expected to be nimble and high-performing despite limited resources,” said Chandrashekar LSP, Zoho Canada’s Managing Director.
As a technology partner to many small and medium sized businesses, he explained how Zoho is future-proofing many such companies with advances in enterprise-grade technologies accessible at consumer price points.
“Zoho is suited to companies big and small, from solopreneurs to enterprises, and tailor-made for small to mid-sized businesses with lean teams that want powerful tools without the complexity or cost of enterprise software.
“The apps are particularly well-suited for industries and use cases where integration, automation, and cost-efficiency are critical. Industries including HR, legal, accounting, transportation & logistics, IT, financial services, retail, and marketing benefit from using Zoho’s products,” LSP described.
Zoho Notebook lets businesses share documents and team files in real-time. Features include user access control; view, edit, and share with collaborators, and more.
Fresh off a successful first half of 2025 (during which it announced a 40% YoY customer growth from global small businesses), Zoho is introducing enhancements to six key SMB solutions: Bigin by Zoho CRM, Zoho Commerce, Zoho Solo, Zoho Contracts, Zoho Start, and Zoho Notebook.
Bigin by Zoho CRM lets users keep track of customers and sales, regardless of their familiarity with CRM systems; it launched in 2020.
Now, new capabilities in the software include integration with Quickbooks Online, Shopify, as well as integration with more than ten payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal (on top of existing integration with Zoho Books and Zoho Payments).
With the newly enhanced version of Zoho Commerce, businesses can build, market, and manage their online presence, selling digital downloads along with physical products to maximize revenue intake. Commerce lets customers manage storefronts with native support for iOS and Android. Social selling is supported through integration with WhatsApp, and owners can manage loyalty point programs for individual customers. Businesses that operate in B2B and wholesale can manage quote requests, price negotiations, and set credit limits with the app, part of the broader Zoho’s Finance platform.
With its SMB and B2B focus, Zoho has not ignored the individual owner/operator, or solopreneur.
Zoho Solo software, optimized for iPads and Android tablets, lets people working on their own take care of business, with functions like client management, expense tracking, invoicing, payments, task management, and reporting in a single app.
More capabilities in Zoho Solo will be rolling out in the coming months, including multi-currency support, inventory management, and AI insights to help users drive revenue, the company announced.
Likewise, in the coming months, Zoho’s note-taking app Notebook will be rolling out new capabilities and integration with other Zoho tools.
Notebook AI, using the capabilities of Zia, Zoho’s in-house AI engine, is now available in Zoho Notebook; it’s one of several AI-fuelled features and functions in Zoho’s suite of business software tools.
Zoho Notebook offers up shared workspaces for teams, projects, or departments, a whiteboard feature for text, graphics, and images, and further integration with other tools like CRM and Mail.
Taking advantage of the capabilities of Zia, Zoho’s in-house AI engine, Notebook AI can automatically convert audio into time-stamped notes, or simplify long notes into clean, visual mind maps. AI writing assistants and smart tags can be used to summarize or rewrite documents and organize important points or notes through AI-generated tagging.
While developments in artificial intelligence and its integration into many business practices can bring tremendous benefit to many companies, successful integration and use can cause concern.
LSP described the significance and the security of Zoho’s own artificial intelligence tools and large language models across its business software offerings in an e-mail exchange with WhatsYourTech.
“Zia LLM is Zoho’s proprietary large language model, engineered from the ground up to deliver powerful, context-aware intelligence across our entire suite of applications.
“It’s the first large language model built specifically for B2B, meaning that its functionality is designed to be more useful for businesses than other models, while adhering to Zoho’s firm data privacy principles. It’s developed entirely in-house using mix of public and proprietary datasets, and not fine-tuned on top of third-party LLMs, so there aren’t any hidden dependencies. Zia LLM is not trained on any customer information, and no customer information is retained upon use of Zia LLM.”
He noted how Zoho’s generic AI models, whether for contextual, assistive, or agentic uses, are not trained on consumer data nor do they retain customer information.
“Because Zoho’s AI initiatives are developed internally, we are able to provide customers with cutting-edge tool sets without compromising data privacy and organizational flexibility. Utilizing our model keeps customer data within our ecosystem; it runs securely on NVIDIA GPUs in Zoho’s private data centres – never on third-party providers.”
“Zoho is leveraging the Dell AI Factory with NVIDIA to accelerate the delivery of its multimodal LLMs and agentic AI tools, ensuring secure, privacy-first infrastructure aligned with Canadian data rules,” Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, director of AI research at Zoho Corp, added when the partnership was announced. “Through our collaboration, we’ve built an AI infrastructure that is secure, scalable and tailored to real-world enterprise needs.”
Yes, Zoho integrates many AI power tools into its software, and it even lets its customers build their own AI tools: Bigin by Zoho CRM customers, for example, can now build custom AI agents or use a pre-built AI agents to drill into reply management, cross-selling opportunities, and churn rates, for example.
LSP explained how Zoho’s privacy-first, tightly controlled architecture helps ensure secure data flow between apps and such AI agents.
“With Zoho’s extensive permissions features, users are capable of controlling what information AI agents have access to, while admins are able to control the level of AI agent information access down to the user level. With permission levels set, AI agents have access to only the appropriate level of information at all times, and users cannot be provided confidential information by an agent.”
Zoho says its success with small businesses around the world is reflected not only in its 40% YoY customer growth, not only in its integrated product ecosystem that addresses both the critical operational and technology needs of SMBs today, but also in its respect for user data safety, security, and privacy, as LSP points out:
“Zoho’s advice for customers concerned about data security while using AI-powered features is the same advice that motivates the way we run our business: utilize a software provider that treats your data as yours and not something to be shared, used, or sold, that takes steps to protect your data, and that provides you a high degree of control over it.”
Zoho is a privately held corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India, and Canadian offices in Cornwall, Ontario.
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