Roland Hortaleza was on track to become a doctor. He had completed his residency training and was set to practice medicine—but his heart wasn’t in it.
“I was forced by my parents to take up medicine, but it wasn’t where my heart and mind were because I wanted to do business,” he says.
Instead of pursuing a career in medicine, Hortaleza took a huge risk—he walked away from the medical field to start a small business with just P12,000 in savings. That gamble would eventually turn into Splash Corporation, one of the Philippines’ biggest personal care companies.
From Family Business to Startup Hustle
Hortaleza had grown up around Hortaleza Vaciador, his family’s business that sharpened scissors and sold beauty products. That’s where he first learned how sales and distribution worked, even as he followed his parents’ wishes and studied medicine.
But once he quit his residency, he invested his savings into small beauty products, repackaging and selling acetone and alcohol.
“We were simply doing repacking. I would buy drums of alcohol and then transfer it to another container,” he recalls.
With no financial help from his family, he hustled hard—even buying used cough syrup bottles from junk shops, cleaning them, and reusing them for his products.
The Breakthrough That Made Him Millions
In the early ’90s, Hortaleza launched Maxi-Peel and Extraderm, two skincare products that quickly became bestsellers.
“Within just three years, we reached one billion in sales during that time,” he says.
He later introduced whitening products—a market not yet tapped by global brands like Unilever. His company’s success took Splash Corporation global, expanding into Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
A Big Exit
In 2007, Hortaleza took Splash public. After nine years as a listed company, he received an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“I sold the company because I believed that it would be more productive, not only for my family but also for the employees and the brand,” he says.
From quitting medicine to building and selling a billion-peso company, Hortaleza proves that success comes from following what truly excites you—even if it means walking away from a stable career.
This article includes quotes from an interview originally published by Esquire Philippines, authored by Henry Ong.
