Zoho brought major updates to Canada at Zoholics 2025. This episode breaks down the new announcements, Zoho’s AI roadmap, data sovereignty commitments, and the rapid growth of Zoho Workplace with insights from Zoho leader Rakeeb Rafeeque.

Marc sits down with Rakeeb Rafeeque, Head of Market Strategy for Zoho Workplace, following Zoholics 2025 in Toronto. Workplace has seen significant growth this year, including major enterprise and government deployments across India, LATAM, Europe, and the Middle East. Rakeeb explains how data sovereignty, privacy rules, and local data centers are shaping Zoho’s global expansion and why customers value certainty over where their information lives.

The conversation explores Zoho’s focused approach to AI, including Zia LLM, a business-oriented language model built to work inside Zoho’s ecosystem without training on customer data. Rakeeb outlines how customers use Zia to pull insights across email, chat, files, CRM notes, and voice recordings to prep for meetings and manage workflows.

He also discusses customer demand for interoperability between Zoho and Microsoft Teams, which is critical during long enterprise migrations. Rakeeb reflects on ten years at Zoho, the company’s long-term philosophy, and why AI is about to reshape workplace interfaces across email and chat. He shares what makes Zoholics Canada stand out and why Canadian users are some of Zoho’s most engaged and prepared customers.

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