Zoho announced AI agent capabilities for its Analytics platform in Nairobi on 28 Oct 2026 to connect business data with automated workflows and decision-making.

For Kenyan businesses using several applications, the update could bring information into one system for analysis without requiring a separate data platform.

Veerakumar Natarajan, Country Head at Zoho Kenya said AI agents need business context alongside data to support business operations.

He said “a strong data foundation is the starting point for all agentic activity in business operations”.

Zoho said the update introduces tools that help AI agents interpret company terminology and metrics before producing insights or taking actions.

The platform's semantic layer acts as a business glossary.

It gives agents common definitions for terms and measures used across an organisation.

Its ontology layer maps relationships between business entities to help agents understand how different parts of an organisation connect.

Zoho said businesses can manage these models within Analytics without buying a separate data platform or cloud data warehouse.

Ask Zia is the platform's conversational interface.

It now coordinates specialised agents for analysis and visualisation.

These agents also handle data preparation, modelling, coding and actions.

The company said users can move from questions to analysis and workflows through one interface that retains the context of their requests.

Businesses can also create custom agents using their own data and knowledge bases alongside connections to external tools.

Zoho said it is adding more than 30 data connectors to the more than 500 already available.

The additions support Zoho applications and third-party services including SAP, PayPal, Adobe Commerce, Twilio and Notion.

Departments can create separate semantic models so finance and operations teams work with definitions suited to their functions.

The company said its workflow builder allows agents to trigger business processes directly from insights generated by the platform.

Developers can extend these functions through a Model Context Protocol server and a Claude plug-in or embed agents in their own applications.

Zoho said administrators can track agent activity and data access as well as monitor AI usage and costs across teams.

Testing tools allow teams to check agents before deployment and restore earlier versions when required.

These controls could help Kenyan businesses assess automated workflows before using them in daily operations.

Zoho said pricing remains unchanged.

Each plan now includes credits for its large language model.

The Basic plan starts at Ksh2,160 per month when billed annually and covers two users, 500,000 rows and 10,000 Zoho LLM credits.

The company said 100,000 businesses worldwide use Zoho Analytics daily across cloud and on-premises deployments.

Cloud updates are available now, according to Zoho.

Preview versions of reporting tools and the ontology and semantic models are scheduled for global rollout within four to eight weeks.

Zoho said updates for the on-premises version will be available in the first quarter of 2027.

Zoho Corporation announced Catalyst development tools in Nairobi on 7 Sep 2026 to help AI coding assistants build and deploy applications from developers’ coding environments.

Zoho Kenya Country Head Veerakumar Natarajan said reliability and deployment remain key bottlenecks even as code generation accelerates.

“In a very short period of time, AI coding assistants have transformed how quickly applications can be created, but moving that code into production reliably remains a challenge,” Natarajan said.

“Developers still spend significant time managing infrastructure and bringing together separate cloud services.”

“With Catalyst, we are reducing that friction by providing an agent-ready, serverless full-stack platform that helps developers build, deploy and scale intelligent applications with greater control and less operational overhead.”

The company said Catalyst by Zoho is its platform-as-a-service (PaaS) product and the update makes it free for students building non-commercial applications.

Zoho said students require neither a subscription nor a credit card.

According to Zoho, the update introduces “Agent Skills” and a non-interactive command-line interface (CLI) alongside support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Zoho said these capabilities connect AI tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s Codex to Catalyst’s deployment and infrastructure services.

The company said developers can perform database creation and schema changes from VS Code and other AI-enabled IDEs.

The announcement matters to Kenya as software firms and system integrators increasingly adopt AI-assisted coding alongside startups to speed development cycles.

These businesses still face operational and governance hurdles when moving prototypes into production environments.

Tools that reduce the need to combine cloud services can help teams balance skills gaps and cost controls alongside compliance requirements.

Those requirements are particularly relevant to regulated sectors such as finance and telecoms.

Zoho said it retains human oversight by separating development and production environments and requiring manual promotion of code to production.

The company said Catalyst includes scoped collaborator controls and audit trails for application, platform and MCP tool-call logs.

Zoho said versioning and reversibility support post-launch changes.

The company said it has made its AI skills available as an open-source repository.

Zoho said it is also open-sourcing Catalyst’s software development kit (SDK), CLI and its lightweight JavaScript framework Slyte.

Zoho said Catalyst offers a monthly free tier and Ksh22,500 in free credits over six months for users wanting to explore the platform further.

The company said Catalyst uses a pay-as-you-go model that charges for features per unit of usage.

Zoho said users can access budget alerts and spending ceilings through the Catalyst console.

The company said an optional subscription plan is available for teams seeking more predictable costs.

Free student access could lower barriers to experimenting with full-stack deployment and governance practices beyond basic coding in Kenya.

The practical impact will depend on adoption by universities, coding bootcamps and employers.

It will also depend on how well the tools integrate into existing workflows built around major cloud providers.

Zoho said Catalyst is available for immediate use.

The company has not disclosed local uptake targets or expected timelines for broader rollout among Kenyan institutions.