Zoho Announces Catalyst 3.0, An AI Agent-Ready Platform To Take Apps From Prompt To Production

Chennai: Zoho, a global technology company headquartered in Chennai, today announced the launch of Catalyst 3.0, an agent-ready full-stack cloud development platform equipped with new capabilities to enhance the AI-native developer experience.

Catalyst 3.0 introduces AI IDE (Integrated Development Environment) integrations, Agent Skills, MCP support and AI-assisted workflows on a single integrated platform. These capabilities are designed to help developers fast-track the journey from prompt to production.

To improve accessibility and equip future developers with modern tools, Zoho is also offering a free student programme through which next-generation developers can learn, experiment and deploy applications seamlessly.

Over 72% of developers rely on AI every day to write code. However, coding is only one part of the development process, with developers still required to provision, connect and operate the underlying cloud infrastructure, often across different platforms.

Catalyst 3.0 aims to remove this bottleneck by allowing developers to take an application directly from their Agentic AI coding assistants to production-grade infrastructure without leaving the coding environment. The platform is designed for system integrators and software firms building custom solutions, as well as indie developers looking to move from prototype to production without managing infrastructure themselves.

"Agentic AI coding assistants have transformed how quickly applications are being created, but getting that code deployed and operating in production remains a major hurdle," said Anand Nergunam, Vice President, Revenue Growth at Zoho.

"For every app being built, developers spend a lot of time stitching together separate cloud services and managing infrastructure. We built Catalyst 3.0 to eliminate that friction. By delivering an agent-ready, serverless full-stack platform, we are providing developers and AI agents complete freedom from managing cloud infrastructure. They can build, deploy, and scale applications faster safely, with far less operational overhead."

Unlike competitors that charge a subscription fee in addition to usage, Catalyst follows a straightforward pay-as-you-go pricing model, with every feature carrying a per-unit cost. Users can view their usage through the Console and set budget alerts and ceilings to prevent inflated cloud invoices.

"Additionally, to democratise access we are launching a free student tier. By putting Catalyst 3.0 in the hands of student developers, we are freeing them from the burden of traditional development cycles, so they can thrive in a rapidly shifting landscape. Ultimately, our aim is to remove technical friction so they can instantly convert their ideas into tangible outcomes," added Anand Nergunam.

AI-Native Development Capabilities And An Open-Source Ecosystem

Catalyst 3.0 brings several improvements aimed at making the platform compatible with AI coding assistants. To reduce the learning curve for developers, Zoho has introduced Agentic AI skills that allow AI coding assistants to understand the Catalyst platform and generate production-grade code.

These skills are also available across the Claude Code and Codex marketplaces, making them accessible to developers while helping optimise token consumption.

Catalyst has also introduced a non-interactive CLI (Command-Line Interface) to support AI-assisted coding sessions. The CLI can perform tasks from start to finish without requiring manual input from users during execution.

MCP support for Catalyst further enables a hands-off development process, allowing developers to complete actions and requests from within a single coding assistant console rather than switching to the platform's UI console for configurations and other actions.

Orchestration, built into the Skill, connects these three capabilities. When an AI coding assistant needs to determine how to execute a request, the Skill routes it through the CLI or MCP path instead of leaving the decision to the model. According to Zoho, this reduces the developer's cognitive load, lowers the risk of incorrect tool selection and helps create more reliable, production-ready applications.

To strengthen developer trust and transparency, Zoho has made the AI skills available through an open-source repository, allowing developers to inspect and further contribute to them. Zoho is also open-sourcing Catalyst's SDK (Software Development Kit), CLI and its lightweight JavaScript framework, Slyte.

Customer Spotlight: Building With Catalyst

At Eternia, our digital transformation strategy is focused on enabling cross-functional teams with a single source of context across the Zoho applications that power our business.

"Catalyst provided us with a full-stack platform to deliver this experience end-to-end, eliminating the operational overhead of stitching together infrastructure ourselves. What stood out most was the speed of execution. A single developer was able to take the solution from concept to a fully deployed, production-ready application within a short span of time. For an enterprise operating at our scale, this level of speed and agility does more than save time—it fundamentally reshapes how we approach building and scaling internal digital solutions going forward," said Aasheesh Agrawal, Lead- Digital & IT, Eternia by Hindalco.

An Integrated Platform Built On Zoho's Secure Infrastructure

Catalyst 3.0 provides native services required for a full-stack application, ranging from frontend hosting and serverless functions to compute and data management.

With each layer of the stack available on one platform, developers can focus on building solutions rather than managing infrastructure across multiple providers.

Applications built on Catalyst inherit the security layer of Zoho's cloud infrastructure. Developers can also choose to host solutions in Zoho's India data centres, supporting data sovereignty.

Catalyst has deep integration hooks into Zoho apps and is available across data centres in regions including the US and EU for developers building compliance-sensitive applications. The platform also offers select open-source LLM models hosted on Zoho's secure infrastructure, allowing developers to add AI capabilities to applications built on Catalyst.

Pricing And Availability

Catalyst offers a monthly free-tier model that allows developers to explore the platform. Users who want to experience the platform beyond the free tier can also access ₹15,000 equivalent in free credits for a six-month period.

Students can access the latest version of Catalyst for free for educational and non-commercial use.

Catalyst 3.0 is available for immediate use.

System Integrators Build And Scale Their Own Products On Catalyst

“When we built ConfigPilot, and later ActionPilot, we made a deliberate choice to build them on Catalyst rather than stitch together our own infrastructure. Catalyst’s agent-ready approach, where an AI agent can write, deploy, and manage the underlying services just as readily as one of our engineers can, helped us get to first release faster. It also enabled us to turn real-time feedback into shipped changes quickly, rather than waiting on a quarterly release cycle. The same holds for ActionPilot: being built on Catalyst means we can keep reshaping how it connects and behaves without re-architecting the platform underneath it every time a customer asks for something new,” said Gavin Smith, Founder, Element Technology Services, UK.

“Working with Catalyst meant our time went into the product our customers actually pay for, not the plumbing underneath it. We built Nibni, our real-estate platform, on Catalyst and sell it to our customers. With MCP, our agents work alongside Catalyst directly instead of us translating for them. For a team our size, that’s the difference between shipping a feature this week and shipping it next quarter,” said Mostafa Wanas, Founder & Managing Director, Wanas Apps, Middle East.

About Zoho

With over 60 apps across nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world's most prolific technology companies. Headquartered in Chennai, India, Zoho is privately held and profitable, employing more than 19,000 people worldwide.

Zoho is committed to user privacy and does not rely on an ad-revenue business model. The company owns and operates its data centres, providing full oversight of customer data privacy and security.

More than 150 million users globally—across hundreds of thousands of companies—trust Zoho to run their businesses, including Zoho itself.

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