Nanoparticles when combined with conducting polymer polyaniline leads to increase in advanced functional properties. Cu, Ni and Zn metal oxide (CNZMO) nanoparticles were synthesizes by sol-gel technique. Conducting polymer polyaniline was synthesized by low temperature chemical synthesis method. In situ technique was used to synthesize CNZMO-Polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposite. Metal nanoparticles, polyaniline and metal oxide-polyaniline nano-composite were characterized by UV-visible, FTIR, FESEM, XRD and TGA/DTA techniques. Opto-electronic, thermal and anticorrosive properties of CNZMO-PANI nano-composite was compared with their bulk counterpart. The optical band gap of the PANI-nano-composite was found to be 1.72 eV which is lesser than pure polyaniline (3.2 eV) and bulk counterpart (2.2 to 3.6 eV). Anticorrosive property of CNZMO-PANI nanocomposite was tested for mild steel in 0.1 N hydrochloric acid medium and was found to be good corrosion inhibitor at 80 ppm concentration. CNZMO-PANI nanocomposite was found to be thermally stable up to 650 degrees C. Hence, synthesized CNZMO-PANI nano-composite has large number of applications in the field of nano-electronics, heat resistance composite material, optoelectronics and as anticorrosive material. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.