Sandra Ehigiator

Elite Business Women Member

“Sandra Ehigiator is a self-driven and motivated business woman with four years experience as an entrepreneur. She is open minded, optimistic and community focused. She owns and manages an African & international grocery store that caters to the needs of the african-diaspora community in Romania. She is passionate in promoting the African people and culture and does this by organizing social and business networking events.»

She holds an MSc degree in Management of business innovation and technology from the University of Sheffield, UK and SNSPA. Her first degree was in Accounting and Information Management Systems from ASE.

Sandra is the manager and owner of Afronellys and Nellys beauty salon; an african and international grocery and cosmetics store.

“When I came to Romania in 2015, I needed a source of income. I did several jobs like working in call-centers, housekeeping and hair braiding. In 2017, I started an e-commerce shop for the sale of cosmetics and started taking more appointments for afro-braids through facebook. In 2018, I decided it was time to open a small afro-saloon, this was going well and gradually picking up until the pandemic in 2020. After several months with little or no activity in the saloon, I then thought about supplying Nigerian groceries. In July 2020, I started experimenting with this idea while still managing the salon. In February 2021, I opened an African grocery and cosmetics store in Bucharest.”

“As a teenager, I wanted to be an accountant. My dream was to work as an accountant for a few years in one of the big four accounting companies like Deloitte and then become a chartered accountant and set up my own practice. Several years later, during my undergraduate studies in ASE, I was challenged by my professors to think bigger and thus the business mind was nurtured.”

Positive experience: this would be in starting a company, i was able to start my businesses without breaking banks.

My negative experience would be with the language barrier and bureaucracy  in most public and private sectors. Also the difficulty in acquiring man-power. This has somehow limited the growth in my businesses.