India, Sept. 23 -- Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu has argued that software is increasingly becoming a commodity as artificial intelligence lowers the barrier to building applications, but said the company's advantage will lie in integrating those applications, keeping pace with changing regulations and bringing structured business data into AI systems.

"If each piece is a commodity, combining it all into one whole system and offering AI on top of it, all of that is valuable. That is where we play," Vembu said during a press briefing on Wednesday, as Zoho launched its Zia Chat AI interface and entered vertical SaaS across seven industries.

Vembu's comments come as Zoho moves to put AI across its existing suite while building industry-spec...