Driven by personal values, Károly Krokovay began his entrepreneurial journey as a business analyst before advancing to the role of a project manager at a banking IT company. While serving these positions, he soon realized the need to walk on his own path to ensure personal development. Since then, he has travelled a long path to achieve success as the CEO of Informula Ltd. by paving his own way and learning from his own experiences. The CEO Views recognizes this impeccable journey of Károly Krokovay and awards him with the title of “Best CEOs to Watch 2025.”
The Genesis
In 1999, Károly Krokovay started working as a freelancer, supporting Hungarian banks as an external IT consultant. Momentarily, he strived to build companies together with others but kept returning to his own vision and values. Finally, in 2017, he founded Informula Ltd., a company providing IT services to Hungarian banks. “My long-term vision was always that I wanted to help banks undergo a complete IT renewal, which is based on a new approach to system integration and data connectivity,” shared Krokovay. Today, he proudly leads this company that he once founded himself.
Celebrating Accomplishments
Krokovay believes his great successes were not his alone—they were those of his spectacular team. Built on the foundation of personal values, Krokovay’s team comprises leaders capable of taking his mindset forward. With this team, the company has delivered IT platform implementations at banks that were considered strategic—projects that only pay off in the long term and require a special kind of trust usually granted only to large system integrator firms.
Evolution of Informula
With an innovative team looking for new ideas, opportunities, and the latest technologies, Informula evolved to gain early experience in modern data management and integration technologies. At that time, no other competitor in the Hungarian market had experience comparable to theirs in implementing streaming platforms in the banking sector, and by the time a Hungarian bank planned to introduce such solutions, Informula had already established a strong market foundation. By introducing a data-streaming platform, the company practically built an agile organizational capability for long-term growth.
Exemplifying Knowledge
Writing computer programs has been Krokovay’s hobby since high school. He completed his graduation in 1992 as a Business and Systems Analyst and later pursued computer science in a university program. By 1997, he wrote a thesis on artificial intelligence. After working as a freelancer offering consulting and external project management for various Hungarian banks, he developed a product that supported the design and execution of risk management decision trees. Trying his hand at multiple company foundations, he finally built Informula in 2017.
Contribution to Growth
His extensive knowledge of the Greenfield IT development process allowed Krokovay to know the required skills and qualities to hand over specific fields of responsibility to his colleagues. As a CEO, he likes to grant independence to his colleagues, which helps build a team of professionals from various domains. Krokovay also focuses on long-term strategy and guides his clients towards the perspective that structural changes are salient for long-term success.
His openness to new technologies and trends contributes to the company’s growth. “In my team, there are people with the same mindset: open to the new, curious, proactive, and experimental. My role is to create the security and the best possible environment for them to work in,” said Krokovay.
Perspectives on Successful Leaders
A good company leader can be recognized by the fact that the team follows them out of inner conviction. To lead a company, a leader must possess three key attributes: Vision, Safe Space, and Exemplified Leadership. The leader must have a strong vision that seems challenging and maintain the closest connection to this vision, reinforcing it every day. A safe space involves shared results, mistakes, and successes alongside encouragement. In Krokovay’s view, a successful leader must lead by example in everything they do—from taking first steps to admitting mistakes.
Weathering the Storm
According to Krokovay, one of the biggest obstacles to entrepreneurial growth is remote working. To manage a remote work environment, he introduced a bi-weekly virtual breakfast café years ago, which has now become a direct meeting opportunity with the team.
Differentiated values between clients or partners were another challenge that he eliminated by building a supportive and positive culture. As a leader, he always safeguards his team from the negative response of the external environment to their approach.
Krokovay relinquished control over everyday tasks, which led to a supportive work atmosphere. Building a middle management layer has been one of the hardest tasks over the years. He did not always recruit leaders from outside the company—instead, he expected them to emerge from within the team. Even a new leader is appointed with the consent of the entire team. Abuse of trust was another difficulty that Krokovay handled well by fostering accountability among team members and embracing disappointments to support growth-oriented colleagues.
Driving Innovation
Krokovay drives innovation through positive example. For instance, in the bi-weekly breakfast cafés, he brings inspiring topics for discussion or shares his experience with new AI tools to release positive energy for others. Innovation is Informula’s natural element. Many new things are voluntarily first tested by colleagues for improvement before launching.
What’s Ahead?
Informula is currently in dynamic growth. As the CEO of the company, Krokovay finds and mentors the appropriate leadership layer to develop the organization. In the future, the company aims to enter foreign markets. In the next five years, Krokovay targets to establish Informula as an internationally recognized and excellent company—where people work and grow together with joyous clients.
Advice to Emerging Entrepreneurs
Krokovay advised emerging entrepreneurs to search for impressive vision and allies, educate themselves, communicate well, and maintain balance to succeed.
“Inside the company, we build a positive, supportive culture based on shared values—one that feels good to work and exist in.”
