For Nicola Sandoval (Barranquilla, 46 years old) doing business is “jumping into an abyss and building the plane while it is falling.” The tranquility of success bores him: he always prefers the vertigo of undertaking. For this reason, once he creates a business and makes it viable, he hands it over to others to continue their work, so he can dedicate himself to a new one. “One must be aware of one's qualities and capabilities. I am good at starting from scratch and taking companies to 50%; Then, I delegate them to businessmen and executives so that they can take them 100%,” he constantly repeats to his employees and colleagues. With this philosophy, he has built a prosperous business group headed by Anava, a firm that integrates all the links in the chain. cargo export and import logistics, and by the Xeva fund, which brings together Banu – from the construction sector – and Ava Tech – from technology. With Xeva he is working to also venture into tourism, agribusiness and energy production. Likewise, he has launched companies such as Estela, dedicated to providing solutions in electronic billing and electronic data exchange, and Livo, specialized in real estate. Sandoval is also a business activist in Cartagena, the city where Anava is based. Five years ago he began participating in local trade associations and today he chairs the boards of directors of Andi Bolívar and the Cartagena Chamber of Commerce. “I am there because I want to generate transformation and development for our city and our region,” he says. From these positions he has managed to bring private companies closer to the public sector. He is a man who unites and brings people together.
Born entrepreneur
Sandoval's entrepreneurial ambition began at the age of 10, when his father realized the dream of setting up a gas station, which is why the family moved from Barranquilla to Cartagena. On vacation, and for 13 years, Nicola tanked the tractors, changed the oil and washed cars. He decided to enroll in Business Administration and two months before graduating he joined the Coremar group. His first assignment was to sail for four months on a ship so that he could understand the shipping business. In that period he did everything, even repairing engines. After several years of being in the company, and when he was already one of its main executives, he resigned to go to Spain to do an MBA. Upon his return, and at only 29 years old, Coremar returned to lead the construction of the port of Palermo, in the department of Magdalena, which after five years reached a capacity of 1.5 million tons, with 220 permanent employees. But Sandoval wanted much more. He left his position and decided to jump “off the cliff” to follow his intuition: he had observed that the logistics circuit for the import and export of goods was segmented and that in Colombia there was no company that grouped the entire chain. So he planned to build a company that would be in charge of both the international freight forwarding, maritime and land transportation, as well as the unloading, warehousing and distribution of products. He needed money and looked for it by selling lubricants for the maritime industry. In 2011, in the dining room of his house and together with his wife, he founded Link Group, which since 2022 has been called Anava. The company has become the country's leader in logistics services for import and export and today has more than 1,500 employees and operations in the United States, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador. In his desire to lead the change, Sandoval considers that the responsibility Social business is not limited to reducing poverty or improving the living conditions of society, but must decisively support those who risk innovation, buying their products, opening doors and becoming suppliers. Only in this way, he says, can a prosperous country be built. With that philosophy she is raising her seven-year-old son, whom she advises in a small business selling coastal buns and cheeses. “Every weekend we go to Arjona so he can buy the buns and cheeses that he sells in Cartagena. This is how he has learned the value of work and money, and how to treat clients. «That same activity was what I did with my father.»