AI agents writing code is no longer a novelty, but converting that code into a production-ready application is emerging as the next big challenge for developers. Zoho is looking to tackle that gap with Catalyst 3.0, the latest version of its agent-ready, full-stack cloud development platform, unveiled by the Chennai-based company on Wednesday.
“Writing code itself has become super easy and lightning fast,” Anand Nergunam, Global Vice President, Revenue Growth at Zoho, told FE. He added that the real friction exists in converting the written code into a production-ready live app and running it without downtime. “Therefore, the full software development life cycle (or SDLC) has not been through and through very smoothly and fast,” he says.
Bridging the Gap
According to Nergunam, developers still spend considerable time stitching together separate cloud services and managing the underlying infrastructure for applications. Catalyst 3.0 aims to address this gap by allowing developers and AI agents to build, deploy and scale applications without having to manage the infrastructure themselves.
The platform enables developers to take applications from agentic AI coding assistants to production-grade infrastructure without leaving their coding environment. It brings AI IDE (Integrated Development Environment) integrations, Agent Skills, MCP support and AI-assisted workflows onto a single platform, aimed at speeding up the prompt-to-production process.
“Only one-half of the equation has gotten super efficient and fast, the other half is still broken,” Nergunam says, adding that the company is working with system integrators to improve end-to-end development velocity so that more projects with the same number of resources.
The Catalyst 3.0 is aimed at in-house technology teams, system integrators and custom development firms, while also looking to tap independent developers and a wider pool of users such as students, designers, founders, entrepreneurs and marketers.
Nergunam said Catalyst 3.0 has already been used to build an application that is now used by 2 million users, with one developer completing the project in three weeks.
Rise of Vibe Coding
The company believes the rise of vibe coding will also expand the pool of people building applications. According to Zoho, 72% of developers use AI every day to write code while 63% of people using vibe-coding tools are not developers, but product managers, designers, founders and lawyers who can describe an application in plain English and use AI to generate the code.
On the changing role of developers in the agentic AI era, Nergunam said automation could free developers from infrastructure and DevOps-related work and allow them to focus on solving business problems.
“They love to solve business problems. They want to be closer to the customer. This releases more time for developers to take on more projects and do more,” he adds. He expects the growing use of vibe coding to create a larger pool of applications and, consequently, more business problems for developers to solve.
Catalyst 3.0 will offer free usage limits across its components each month, while users going beyond the free tier will receive ₹15,000 worth of credits for a six-month period. The platform will subsequently follow a pay-per-use model rather than a fixed subscription.
Students will be able to use Catalyst 3.0 free of charge for educational and non-commercial purposes. Nergunam said the company wanted developers to pay based on the value and level of usage rather than provisioning capacity in advance.