530k people watched her go through three antiperspirants: a Colombian ingredient-scanning app that grew off the founder's own TikTok

cacao is a scanning app that only rates cosmetics, focused on products on Colombian supermarket shelves. It's been live for just over two months and has only 99 ratings on iPhone, so the volume is small. But how it gained traction is clear: the co-founder was already a Spanish-language skincare blogger, and she switched her whole account to "banned in Europe, still sold here"; meanwhile, Yuka can't be downloaded on iPhone in Colombia. This piece covers how it got started and whether others can take the same path.

An antiperspirant video

On Sep 13, 2026, Carolina Forero posted a TikTok. She flipped over three antiperspirants, Rexona, Secret and Ban, and read out the ingredients one bottle at a time: "Rexona: 15 warning ingredients (endocrine disruptors, petroleum derivatives). Secret: 13. Ban Invisible unscented: 96/100 🎉" The scores came from an app she helped build. By Nov 6, the video had 534k views (TikTok, 11-06).

Two weeks later, in Sep 25, she posted another, this time naming the app directly: "The tool that helped me most during pregnancy was the cacao ingredient-scanning app. It told me which cosmetics I couldn't use while pregnant." It got 135k views. Her profile reads "Co-founder @cacao," "hormonal health & clean ingredients," "Health coach (IIN) 🇺🇸🇨🇴," and the link underneath is cacaoapp.com/app?s=caro_tiktok, with a source tag in the link.

The app went live on the App Store in Aug 26. The developer is Macondo Enterprises LLC, registered in Miami Beach, Florida, and it's the company's only app.

What it is

Scan a cosmetic's barcode and get a 0–100 score in four tiers: Evitar (avoid), Puede mejorar (could be better), Buena elección (good choice), and Excelente (excellent). Tap any flagged ingredient to see why it was flagged; every warning links to the original source: the US FDA, the EU's ECHA and SCCS, and the WHO's IARC. The Nov 4 update links down to the specific page of the archived document. Scoring also considers product type: the same preservative scores differently in a shampoo rinsed off in minutes than in a face cream left on all day.

It only covers beauty and personal care, not food. The product database is mostly stock from local chains like Éxito, Carulla, and Farmatodo; the site says it has 11,551 products and over 4,000 ingredients. If a scan finds nothing in the database, users can fill it in by taking two photos.

Scanning and scores are free. The paid membership is called Cacao Friend, US$19.99 a year with a 3-day trial. It unlocks "higher-scoring alternatives in the same category," full-database search, and category rankings (official site, 11-06). The site repeatedly stresses three things: no ads, brands can't pay to change scores, and wrong ratings are publicly corrected. The membership fee is framed as the cost of staying independent.

How big it really is

(Combined App Store ratings across storefronts; charting means appearing on a category chart in some storefront)

In the last 7 days it added 16 ratings, about two a day, averaging 4.82 stars. Nearly all are from Colombia, with other storefronts in single digits: Ecuador 4, US 4, Venezuela 3, Peru and Mexico at 0 each (App Store, 11-06). Its best chart result was #47 on the Colombia Health & Fitness Top Free chart. At the end of October it was charting in 3–4 stores; since then only Colombia remains.

The Android version on Google Play shows "5 mil+" downloads and 213 reviews (11-06). Colombia has many Android phones, so Android being bigger than iOS is normal.

Revenue isn't public, and it doesn't appear on the Top Grossing chart. Given the rating volume, my inference is that paying users number in the dozens to hundreds.

Reviews go both ways. Positive ones are mostly "finally I know what I'm putting on my body," and some people casually ask for more: "It would be great if there were one for food." Negative ones point to the same issue: "Downloaded it a week or two ago and it never scanned anything once," "info is incomplete, too general, and expensive, scanning doesn't work well" (Colombia App Store reviews, October). The local product database isn't full yet, and that's its biggest weakness.

Where users come from

1. The founder's TikTok, the main channel, confirmed. Carolina didn't start her account for this app. She was already posting Spanish-language lowtox skincare content 2024 years ago, with one video on an acne repair cream getting 210k views, and one on tinted sunscreen in March 2025 getting 105k. By the time the app launched, she had about 18.5k followers and 688k likes.

Starting in September, the account switched to a fixed formula: name a mass-market brand everyone uses, read out its ingredients, say "the EU banned or restricted this long ago, but it's still sold here," then list the regulation numbers and sources in the caption. Several videos from 9 through November topped 100k views:

(TikTok, view count as of 11-06)

From 9 through November, these videos add up to roughly 2M views. The story matches what the app sells: "I'm not scaring you, I'm giving you the sources." The videos cite sources, and so does the app. Pregnancy and baby topics are also where people are most willing to pay for peace of mind.

But there's a shift to watch: the November videos dropped to a few thousand to forty thousand views. Growth most likely came in waves tied to how often she posted; whichever video took off, downloads rose for a few days (inference).

2. Search traffic from Yuka, confirmed. Yuka is the biggest app in this category worldwide, a French product for food and cosmetics that claims 55M users. But its iPhone version doesn't show up in the App Store in Colombia, Peru, or Chile (App Store, 11-06). cacao wrote a dedicated page titled "¿Se puede descargar Yuka en Colombia?" (Can you download Yuka in Colombia?). The first line answers: "Depends on your phone: iPhone no, Android yes," with a comparison table of cacao, Yuka, and INCI Beauty below. There are also a "Yuka-like apps" page and 70 category, ingredient, and product pages, roughly 650 URLs in total.

3. Brand account, very small reach. @cacaoapp has only 21 followers, and 13 videos that each get a few hundred views. The content visits Farmatodo, Éxito, and Carulla, ranks sunscreens, toothpastes, and wet wipes on the shelf from worst to best, and ends with "Comment cacao and I'll DM you the link."

4. Store search, inferred. The app name literally includes "escáner de ingredientes" (ingredient scanner). Colombian iPhone users who search for Yuka don't find it, so they may land here.

No paid ads found; no media coverage; nobody discussing it on X.

Who it's competing with

In Colombia, cacao doesn't lack competitors. INCI Beauty's rating there is 15 times its own. Functionally, Yuka and INCI Beauty can do much of what it does. What it really has over them is two things: a more complete local product catalog (still being built out), and a founder who can produce a hit every day.

Why it took off

• The audience was ready-made. The founder is herself a blogger in this niche. Her hit videos are the proof of demand; the app just turns the "check the label, trace the source" method from her videos into a tool.
• Fear plus sources spreads well. "Banned in Europe, still sold here": it names Rexona, Pantene, and Garnier, and each post cites a regulation number, so it doesn't look like scaremongering. On LatAm TikTok, this kind of content naturally spreads.
• A specific gap. The leading apps can't be downloaded on iPhone in this country, so people who get convinced can't find them. cacao wrote a page to catch exactly these people.
• The paywall pitch is simple. "We take no brand money, so we charge you," at $19.99 a year, a very low bar.

If it were you

My verdict: C. You can learn a clean playbook from it, but this app itself isn't worth copying. Its volume comes from the founder's own account, which followers can't replicate; Yuka and INCI Beauty already have users across LatAm; and its own scale and revenue haven't proven much yet.

Who it fits: you (or a cofounder) are already a content creator in a vertical, with tens of thousands of real followers, and those followers buy things that can be "checked label by label and scored": skincare, baby and maternal products, pet food, supplements, baby food. What you lack is an app that turns the method from your videos into a tool.

Who it doesn't fit: developers without an audience who plan to build one from zero; anyone trying to make "another Yuka" by competing on algorithms and global databases; anyone hoping SEO and store search will carry them (cacao's brand account has 21 followers and a few hundred views per video, which shows that content without a personality-driven creator won't move it).

How to do it: find the gap first, then build the product. Check whether leading apps like Yuka and INCI Beauty are unavailable on the App Store in certain countries, or can't scan the products on local supermarket shelves. Pick a country you understand and do one category only. Start the product catalog from the shelves of three or four local supermarket chains, and let users add photos for anything the scanner misses. Link every warning to its source: that's both product and video material. Scanning is free; an annual fee of $15–25 unlocks alternative recommendations. When people in the reviews ask for an "eat-this" version, that's where the second category can come from.

How to get users: shoot it the way Carolina does: a mainstream brand, one ingredient list, one line like "banned in Europe, still sold here," and sources listed in the caption. Pregnancy, baby, and women's health topics get the most views. Use a link in bio with source tags so you can tell which video each download came from. Also write pages like "Can you download <leading app> in <your country>?" to catch search traffic.

When to do it before others: there's no holiday rush, but the gap will close: the day Yuka lands on the local App Store, this search traffic is gone. Confirm the gap still exists before you start.

What would mean I got this wrong: (1) cacao's rating is still only a couple hundred by 2027 February and single digits outside the Colombia store, which would show that "founder-led selling" only goes this far and this route is narrow; (2) it consistently shows up on the Colombia Top Grossing chart, which would mean people really buy the $19.99 membership and this playbook is worth copying seriously (upgrade to B); (3) Yuka launches on the Colombia App Store, and the Yuka-search-traffic angle becomes worthless; (4) Carolina stops posting or changes topics and cacao's new ratings drop to zero, which would show it was an account, not a product.

Data and sources

• App Store: cacao (id6760831730) store page, ratings and charts by store, Colombia store reviews, 10-28 to 11-06. Competitors: Yuka id1092799236, INCI Beauty id1276113963, OnSkin id1630768985, Think Dirty id687176839, MyGlowApp id6757500262,11-06.
• Google Play: com.cacao.cacao page (11-06); competitor install counts from Google Play.
• Website: cacaoapp.com homepage, pricing, /alternativas/yuka-colombia (published 11-02), sitemap.
• TikTok: @carolinaforero_ and @cacaoapp profiles and videos, view counts as of 11-06.
• Yuka country list: help.yuka.io, yuka.io.
• Paid user count is an estimate; not finding ads doesn't mean none were run.