The conference set out to examine whether “regenerative capitalism” can move from a sustainability concept into a scalable investment model.
The event also hosted the launch of the first joint CEE Impact Report by Impact CEE and KPMG, adding regional performance data to a debate that has often been dominated by principles rather than measurable financial and impact outcomes.
Held under the theme “Price is not Equal to Value,” the English-language conference marked roughly a decade since the first CEE4Impact Day. Over that period, impact investing in Central and Eastern Europe has broadened from a relatively specialized community into a discussion involving venture capital and private equity funds, banks, institutional investors, corporations and public-sector finance.
Impact CEE framed this year’s program around a shift from minimizing harm to building businesses and investment systems that can restore or strengthen the environmental, social and human resources on which they depend. The organizers argued that this approach could also form part of a distinct European competitiveness model at a time when the continent is seeking a position between the United States and China.
The day’s most concrete evidence came from the CEE Impact Report 2026. The study covers 61 impact enterprises, four general partners managing seven impact funds, and four limited partners across Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.
Among comparable enterprises, aggregate three-year revenue compound annual growth reached 30.03%, while the median enterprise-level revenue CAGR was 45.51%. The report finds median year-on-year growth in primary impact indicators at 19.82%, with secondary impact indicators rising 41.1%.
The figures support the proposition that commercial expansion and measurable social or environmental outcomes do not automatically move in opposite directions. At the same time, the fund data show that the regional market is still developing. Three-quarters of the four more mature impact funds in the sample had started returning capital to limited partners, but median distributed-to-paid-in capital, or DPI, stood at 11.25%. That leaves exits and cash distributions as an important test if impact funds are to attract larger pools of institutional capital.
KPMG’s published case studies illustrate the range behind the aggregate figures. Outdoor-adventure marketplace 57hours increased revenue more than fivefold after investment while pursuing inclusion, gender-equality and more sustainable tourism objectives. Digital mental-health platform Hedepy delivered more than 301,000 therapy sessions in 2025 and expanded services across eight European countries. Austrian food company Unverschwendet, meanwhile, has saved more than 1.5 million kilograms of food from waste since its founding.
Ágnes Rakó, CEO of KPMG in Hungary, said the combination of evidence, professional judgment and collaboration could help build “a more sustainable, inclusive and competitive economy.” Impact CEE President Elemér Eszter said the report was intended not only to describe the regional ecosystem, but also to show investors, entrepreneurs, companies and policymakers what is already possible.
The report’s sample remains modest compared with mainstream private-capital markets, particularly on the fund and limited-partner side. Still, it provides a more detailed regional snapshot than the impact-investment debate in CEE has generally had available, combining company growth, impact indicators and early liquidity data in one framework.
Arnaud Blandin, CEO of Vela Intelligence and founder of the Institute for Responsible Innovation and Sustainability, used his keynote to argue that sustainability should be integrated into corporate strategy rather than treated primarily as a reporting or compliance function.
His book, “The Seven Principles Playbook for Sustainable Companies,” published by Palgrave Macmillan in August, sets out a framework covering purpose, planetary boundaries, stakeholder alignment, environmental footprint, broader value creation, resilience and measurable impact.
“Growth is not the problem. Extraction is the problem,” Blandin writes in the book. He argues that companies do not necessarily have to choose between expansion and sustainability if growth is designed within environmental constraints and strengthens the systems on which the business depends.
For investors, Blandin offered another test: “Impact is simply the world with us minus the world without us.” In practical terms, that shifts attention from whether an investment can be labeled sustainable to whether the capital actually changes an outcome that would otherwise not occur.
Cyril Gouiffes of the European Investment Fund followed with a session on Europe’s path toward regenerative capitalism. Gouiffes has worked on impact-related activities at the EIF since 2008, beginning with microfinance and later managing social-impact investment instruments.
The Budapest program placed his institutional-capital perspective alongside Blandin’s corporate framework. It repeatedly returned to the need for cooperation across entrepreneurs and scaleups, VC and private equity investors, institutional capital and large corporations.
That ecosystem approach was visible across the agenda. The morning Impact Combinator pitch stage featured companies from Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, including Carbon.Crane, Vadvirágom, FreyZein NextGen Textiles, and Nutri-Scheme.
Later sessions examined investment in Ukraine, food security, human and cultural capital, and the mobilization of European pension assets for competitiveness, innovation and regenerative growth.
Nikolaus Hutter of Relevant Ventures opened the conference with a keynote on decision-making under uncertainty and later moderated the Ukraine investment panel. He also received the Smart Capitalism Prize at the event.
The CEE4Impact Day did not resolve the larger question of whether regenerative capitalism can become a mainstream European model, but the 2026 program moved the discussion closer to investment mechanics.
The new report’s strongest company-growth figures show that impact-oriented businesses can scale. At the same time, the much earlier stage of fund distributions highlights the remaining challenge: converting promising operating performance into repeatable exits, returned capital, and institutional-scale investment.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of October 30, 2026.
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