Not Just Content, This Is How Edho Zell Lives A Life With Creativity

Paper UNFOLD 2025 at The Kasablanka Hall. (Adelia/VOI)

JAKARTA - The name Edho Zell is no longer a foreigner in the digital world of Indonesia. Known since the beginning of the era of YouTube 2009, long before the platform had a monetization system like Adsense, Edho had taken a long path in the world of creative content.

Now its journey has grown far beyond the video screen, becoming the driving force behind digital agency, MSME educators, to technology-based business transformation actors.

"From 2009, when YouTube didn't have Adsense, I started making content. From a young age I already had the idea to make something from scratch," recalled Edho while speaking at the 2025 UNFOLD Paper forum at The Kasablanka Hall, Jakarta on Wednesday, October 15, 2025.

The journey is not just about digital entertainment. For Edho, building creativity means building attention. It finds a way to steal market attention through original ideas.

From there, he started building Social Bread, a digital agency now known as one of the most influential TikTok agencies in Indonesia, managing various projects from digital campaigns to major offline events such as in Pekan Raya Jakarta (PRJ).

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a major turning point in Edho's career. In times when many small businesses were forced to close, Edho actually found a new call, namely helping traders in Tanah Abang and ITC who lost their income due to the restriction policy.

"Many friends selling in Tanah Abang and ITC came to me to study online. At first it was only two or three people, but they did it and finally the others came along," he said.

Since then, there has been a social movement based on digital marketing training, where Edho and his team helped small business actors understand how to build brands on social media.

"Everyone finally wanted to use social brands, and we helped them build a system. Starting from Gen Z recruitment to create content, to train to become a social media specialist," he added.

Namun di balik keberhasilan membangun ekosistem kreatif, Edho mengakui tantangan besar justru ada pada sisi finansial.

"I'm a creative person, it's the most difficult to see numbers," he joked.

He reminisced about the early days when agency projects had to cover large client payments.

"Sometimes we are the ones who bail out the costs first, even though the projects can be billions. The challenges are very real in the agency industry," said Edho.

This is where it highlights the importance of financial technology as Paper developed, especially in terms of payment, invoiting, and cashflow management.

"Now with advances in payment technology and invoices, everyone can learn to manage business more efficiently," he said.

Through his presence at the 2025 UNFOLD Paper, Edho Zell is a real example of the transformation of creative actors who have successfully adapted and built a sustainable business system.

This forum itself became the meeting room for more than 1,000 business actors, professionals, and cross-sectoral investors, discussing the future of Indonesia's business with the theme "Rooted in Legacy, Rising with Technology".

In his remarks, my son Sugialam, Co-Founder & CEO Paper stated that since Paper was founded eight years ago, he learned from hundreds of thousands of business actors in various sectors that surviving businesses are not the fastest growing, but the most adaptive to change.

"We present the UNFOLD paper to help business actors adapt to various changes, make data-based decisions, so they can develop a more resilient business, without losing good legacy values." he said.