Zoho announces Catalyst 3.0, an AI agent-ready platform that helps developers take apps from prompt to production in one cloud

Zoho announces Catalyst 3.0, an AI agent-ready platform that helps developers take apps from prompt to production in one cloud

Helping developers build and deploy apps using Agentic AI Coding Assistants with less infrastructure overhead, while making modern application development accessible to students through a free programme

Chennai-September 02, 2026-Zoho, a global technology company headquartered in Chennai, today announced the launch of Catalyst 3.0, the agent-ready full-stack cloud development platform, equipped with all-new capabilities to enhance the AI-native developer experience. Catalyst 3.0 brings enhancements, including AI IDE (Integrated Development Environment) integrations, Agent Skills, MCP support, and AI-assisted workflows, on a single integrated platform to empower developers by fast-tracking the prompt-to-production process. To enhance accessibility and equip future developers with modern tools, the platform is also offering a free student program, allowing next-gen developers to learn, experiment and deploy applications seamlessly.

Over 72% of developers rely on AI everyday to write code. However, coding is only one part of the development process and developers still need to work on provisioning, connecting and operating the underlying cloud infrastructure, often across different platforms. Catalyst 3.0 eliminates this bottleneck by helping developers take an app straight from their Agentic AI coding assistants to production-grade infrastructure without leaving the coding environment. The platform is built 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, Global 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 its competitors that charge subscription fee in addition to usage, Catalyst has a straightforward pay-as-you-go pricing model with every feature bearing a per-unit cost. Users have complete visibility over their usage within the Console, and can 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 to the platform to make it better equipped to work with any AI coding assistant. To reduce the learning curve for the developers, Zoho has added Agentic AI skills that enable the AI coding assistants to understand the Catalyst platform and enable them to write production-grade code. Furthermore, the skills have also been made available across the Claude Code and Codex marketplaces, making it accessible for developers while helping them optimise token consumption.

To further improve the experience of AI-assisted coding sessions, Catalyst has introduced a non-interactive CLI (Command-Line Interface) that can perform tasks from start to finish without prompting the user for manual input during its execution. Additionally, MCP support for Catalyst enables a complete hands-off development process, with developers completing all actions and requests from within a single coding assistant console without the need to perform actions and configurations via the platforms UI console.

Orchestration, built into the Skill, ties the three capabilities together. When an AI coding assistant faces a decision about how to execute a request, the Skill routes it deterministically down the CLI or MCP path rather than leaving that choice to the model. This approach lowers the developer's cognitive load, reduces the risk of incorrect tool selection, and helps produce more reliable, production-ready applications.

To strengthen developer trust and transparency, Zoho has made the AI skills available as an open-source repository for developers to be able to inspect and further add to. Zoho is also open-sourcing Catalyst's SDK (Software Development Kit), CLI, as well as its lightweight Javascript Framework, Slyte.

An Integrated Platform Leveraging Zoho's Secure Infrastructure

Catalyst 3.0 offers native services to meet all the requirements of a full-stack application from frontend hosting and serverless functions to compute and data management. With every layer of the stack available in one place, developers can focus on building solutions instead of managing infrastructure, which generally spans across multiple providers.

Any application built on Catalyst inherits the security layer of Zoho's cloud infrastructure, and the developers have the option to host solutions in the company's India data centres, respecting data sovereignty. Catalyst has deep integration hooks into Zoho apps. It is available across data centres in regions like US and EU, for developers building compliance-sensitive applications. Catalyst also offers a few open-source LLM models, hosted on Zoho's secure infrastructure, to add AI capabilities to the apps built on the platform.

Customer Success: Building with Catalyst

Eternia by Hindalco (Aditya Birla Group)

Eternia, part of Hindalco, uses multiple Zoho applications across its business. As teams grew, employees needed a unified, contextual view of information across these systems. Using Catalyst, Eternia built an experiential application that brings this data together in a single, productivity-focused experience, eliminating the need to switch between applications.

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 (Aditya Birla Group).

We The Leaders Foundation (Non-profit Organisation)

We the Leaders, a citizen leadership movement founded by K Annamalai, has rapidly expanded to nearly 2 million leaders. The organisation built its digital engagement platform on Catalyst by Zoho, using managed authentication, datastore, serverless functions, file storage, and scheduled jobs. By leveraging Catalyst's AI-assisted development capabilities, the organisation went from initial discussions to a full security-audited application across Android, iOS, and the web in just three weeks. The platform serves as the movement's primary channel for engagement across 38 districts.

Before we launched We the Leaders as a political movement in early June 2026, we were contemplating on how to manage engagement while we reach a certain scale. We needed a secure platform to organise events, verify leader identities, and gain visibility into activities across the state. Catalyst enabled us to get the platform operational in a few weeks through AI-assisted development, without compromising security. Today, every leader has a verified digital membership identity, every event and post follows an approval workflow, and our administrators have a real-time view of engagement across Tamil Nadu & various parts of the world," Dr. Prabhakaran, Chief Executive Officer, We the Leaders Foundation.

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.

Disclaimer: All trademarks, product names, and company names cited herein are the property of their respective owners.

Pricing and Availability

Catalyst offers a monthly free-tier model for developers to explore the platform. ₹15,000 equivalent free credits are also offered to users who want to experience the platform deeper beyond the free tier for a six-month period.

Students can avail the latest version of Catalyst for free for educational and non-commercial use: https://catalyst.zoho.com/students/

Catalyst 3.0 is available for immediate use, for more details: https://catalyst.zoho.com/pricing.html

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. Over 150 million users globally-across hundreds of thousands of companies-trust Zoho to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, visit https://www.zoho.com

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