At Zoho’s SMZ 2025 event, collaboration was the word of the day — but Zoho is giving that idea a whole new meaning with Vani, its intelligent visual collaboration platform. I sat down with Aarthi Elizabeth Anbu, Product Marketing Manager at Zoho, to learn how Vani reimagines teamwork for small businesses that juggle multiple tools, tasks, and time zones.

Where Knowledge Begins

When asked about the name, Aarthi smiled. “There is an Indian goddess called Saraswati, who is the goddess of knowledge and learning,” she explained. “So Vani is another name for her. Because this is where knowledge begins, where brainstorming starts, so that’s why Vani.”

That origin fits the platform’s purpose perfectly. Vani is designed as an intelligent, visual collaboration space — a kind of shared digital whiteboard where teams can brainstorm, draw mind maps, plan projects, and even host video meetings without switching between multiple apps.

Why Visual Collaboration Matters

Aarthi described Vani with a vivid analogy: “Imagine a football coach trying to plan a game without a formation board,” she said. “Everyone’s going to have to imagine it in their head. And that’s complex.”

The same is true for teams, especially small ones, trying to plan projects or manage workflows across tools like Slack, Zoom, and email. “Imagine a team trying to plan an entire project from start to finish without a Kanban board, without a Gantt chart,” she continued. “It’s going to increase the cognitive load on your head and slow the entire process.”

That’s where Vani comes in. It gives small and midsize teams a shared visual space to brainstorm, plan, and execute — keeping everyone on the same page, literally. “Smaller companies, younger teams, they work well visually,” Aarthi said. “Teams move forward when ideas are visual.”

One Infinite Canvas for Everything

For small businesses that rely on multiple apps for meetings, email, and planning, Vani aims to become the one-stop visual workspace.

“With Vani, you don’t have to have five different applications,” Aarthi explained. “You bring everything onto an infinite canvas. Whether you’re putting together a product roadmap, planning a social media campaign, or diagramming network architecture — you can do it all in one place.”

Vani’s built-in video feature eliminates the need for third-party meeting tools. “You don’t need to integrate with Zoom or go out of the application,” Aarthi said. “You simply start a meeting, and everyone’s notified. They can decide if they want to jump on, and you can select exactly where you want them to join.”

The canvas also supports asynchronous communication — a major benefit for distributed or flexible teams. “You can leave comments for your team, add voice notes, and react to different elements,” she said. “It’s a fun way to work, and you can get things done faster.”

Templates and Kits: Ready-to-Use and Customizable

One of Vani’s most practical features for small businesses is its library of templates and kits — pre-built setups for common workflows like project planning, sales follow-ups, and marketing strategy.

“Vani has two things,” Aarthi said. “One is ready-to-use templates, and my favorite is being able to put together a social media post or brainstorming template where you can create a mind map and have different members of your team start working on it.”

AI also plays a role. “You can simply say, ‘Vani, create a flowchart with this, this, and this for me,’ and it’s going to create one for you,” she said.

For more specialized needs, kits help tailor the workspace. “Let’s say you’re a designer and you’re going to diagram a network architecture,” she explained. “You can add the AWS kit, and it’s going to have all these tools there. You just drag and drop and start building.”

This approach gives small teams both flexibility and structure — ready-made templates for quick starts, and customization for unique business processes.

Integrations for a Seamless Day

No modern tool stands alone, and Zoho knows small businesses live in multi-app worlds. Vani integrates with key Zoho products like WorkDrive, Mail, Projects, and Show, as well as external platforms such as Microsoft Teams.

“I think most small teams use Microsoft Teams,” Aarthi said. “You’re going to be able to pull up Vani from within Teams without leaving it and start having a discussion or draw a mind map. Having a centralized space for everyone to work on the same thing — that’s a big advantage.”

And that’s just the beginning. “This is first of many,” she added. “We’re going to be integrating with Google and all your communication apps because we want to be able to pull in the visual part of collaboration — across apps, across regions, across languages.”

Making Collaboration More Human

Beyond its technical capabilities, Vani brings personality to collaboration. The platform includes voice notes, comments, pins, mentions, live cursors, and reactions, making teamwork more interactive — even fun.

“With Vani, everyone looks at what everyone else is doing,” Aarthi said. “Of course, you have complete control — admins can set roles and permissions, deciding who can view, edit, or organize spaces.”

That balance of openness and control helps small teams stay transparent without chaos. “If you do want to monitor and have control, you can,” she explained. “But if you don’t and you want everyone to have equal space, you can too.”

These real-time reactions and live cursors give teams instant visual feedback. “Just before today, we tested out Vani with about 35 team members back in India,” Aarthi recalled. “Everyone was saying something or the other, and it was so much fun. No one was really moderating it. It was a good experience.”

For small businesses without a dedicated project manager, this kind of built-in visibility acts as a lightweight audit trail — showing who did what, when, and where — all within the same workspace.

Rethinking Meetings with Catchups

Vani also introduces a new type of meeting — or, more accurately, anti-meeting — called “Catchups.” Designed to reduce context switching and meeting overload, Catchups are short, flexible, and spontaneous.

“They’re not like your regular meetings,” Aarthi explained. “You don’t have to create an invite or a meeting link and have everyone come at a certain time. If you’re working on something and want someone’s opinion, you start a Catchup.”

Anyone can jump in or out as needed. “There’s no set meeting approach,” she added. “If you want to discuss something, you hop in; if you don’t, you hop out. It helps with asynchronous communication because not everyone has to be available at the same time.”

Catchups fit naturally into the way small businesses operate — fluid, fast-moving, and focused on results. “We are working on chat as part of Vani too,” Aarthi shared. “It’s in our roadmap.”

Designed for How Small Businesses Work Today

For many small teams, the biggest challenge isn’t the lack of tools — it’s too many tools. Between video calls, project trackers, email threads, and shared drives, information often ends up scattered.

Vani tackles that by offering one centralized visual hub where everything connects: brainstorming, task planning, documentation, and real-time conversation.

That holistic approach is what Aarthi calls “shared visual intelligence” — the idea that when teams think and see together, they work smarter. “We thought we should have a product like Vani,” she said. “We should use this concept of shared visual intelligence and put it in everything we do.”

For small business owners, that translates to fewer meetings, faster decisions, and a stronger sense of team alignment — all without needing to invest in complex or expensive project management tools.

From Early Access to Everyday Use

Vani is currently available in early access at vaniHQ.com. Small business owners can sign up to explore its infinite canvas, ready-to-use templates, and AI-powered tools firsthand.

“Vani is, we’re opening out early access,” Aarthi said. “You can simply sign up and start using the product and giving it a shot.”

As Zoho continues to expand its suite of AI-driven business applications, Vani adds a fresh, human-centered layer to the ecosystem — one focused not just on data or automation, but on how people actually work together.

Why Vani Matters for Small Businesses

In an age where small teams are spread across locations, devices, and schedules, the need for clear, connected collaboration has never been greater. Tools like Vani help bridge that gap by blending the visual flexibility of a whiteboard, the structure of a project planner, and the communication power of video and chat — all in one unified space.

For entrepreneurs and small business owners who want their teams to stay organized without getting bogged down in endless emails or meetings, Vani offers a refreshing, practical alternative.

As Aarthi put it: “It’s a fun way to work, and you can get things done faster.”

Key Takeaway:
For small business teams looking to streamline communication, brainstorming, and project management, Zoho’s Vani delivers an all-in-one visual collaboration platform that simplifies work — from the first idea to final handoff — and brings knowledge, creativity, and teamwork together on one infinite canvas.

This article, “Zoho’s New Collaboration Tool “Vani” Aims to Simplify Small Business Teamwork” was first published on Small Business Trends