A ski app hit the Top Grossing chart in Mauritius: Berk's shell, and what it sells inside

On the App Store Berk is listed as "Ski Tracker & Community", pitched as GPS ski logging, 3D route replay, and an AI coach. But in Nov 6 its strongest placements were in Mauritius, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Egypt, none of which have ski resorts, and on the Top Grossing chart. Users are paying for coins inside the app, and spending them on private chats and voice calls with strangers. Below we break down what it actually is, how it climbed the charts in 101 countries, and why we don't recommend following it.

Two US users, two different apps

In Oct 8, a US user named Garret (with a skiing emoji in his name) gave Berk one star under the title "AI generated app", with one line of text: "Nobody who actually skis, just a few empty accounts."

Three weeks later, in Oct 30, another US user gave one star for a different reason: "Doesn't work, nobody to meet. Totally different from the app on my friend's phone."

One person went in looking for people to ski with, the other went in looking for "people to meet", and the Berk on his friend's phone looked different. Put these two reviews together and they pretty much explain Berk: the same app shows different things to different people. An Oct 27 five-star review put it most bluntly: "Great app, you can meet new friends." Nobody mentioned skiing.

What it is

On the store page, Berk is a ski and snowboard logging tool plus community: real-time speed, vertical drop, turn count, 3D route replay, following other skiers, powder-day posts, and an AI coach. Released Aug 28, category Lifestyle.

Look closer and the details don't add up:

• Age rating 18+, flagged for "messaging and chat, user-generated content, social media". A ski-logging tool rarely needs that rating.
• The only in-app purchase is coins, in 9 tiers, from $0.99 to $99.99, with no subscription. Real ski-logging products like Slopes make their money on annual subscriptions.
• The website is berk.love. Its terms of service cover private messages, voice calls between users, virtual currency, adults-only use, and reporting for child sexual exploitation. The terms describe coins as "fees for asking questions of the AI ski coach".
• The seller is an Indonesian company, PT SANDI DAYA GUNA, and the developer display name is "Berk SANDI".

The same Indonesian company has another app on Google Play called Sube: Faces Across Borders. We didn't install it. Its store description opens with "face-to-face one-on-one video chat", "virtual gifts", and "ages 18+ only". In Oct 29 a Sube user wrote: "Picked up the call and they're just sitting there looking at you." The company replied with an apology. Sube had 29k installs in Oct 103 and 6k in Nov 202, more than doubling in about a week (Google Play installs).

So Berk is most likely the iPhone version of Sube's business: one-on-one chat and calls with strangers, charged in coins, wrapped in a skiing skin to get through Apple's review (an inference; we haven't seen the "other side" of the app in screenshots). In the global-expansion circles this is called a "sock-puppet package": a legitimate-looking tool gets submitted for review, and after approval, depending on region, device or channel, it switches to the features it actually sells.

How it took off

In Oct 22 Berk shipped version 1.1.0, with release notes that read "bug fixes and improvements". Then it started charting. By Oct 28 it was on the charts in 77 countries, with only 24 ratings worldwide.

Then came Oct 30. That day the US, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Malaysia and more than a dozen other countries began gaining ratings on the same day. Daily new ratings by store (App Store, 10-30 to 11-06):

More than a dozen countries took off on the same day, then roughly halved each day after. Organic growth doesn't look like this. It looks more like a coordinated batch of "good review" tasks (an inference). The US five-star reviews are also clustered between October 27 and 29, with lines like "Fire", "Good app" and "this is a really good app".

What really drove exposure was the charts. It picked the Lifestyle category and spread across small countries. In Nov 6 its best positions by country were:

Mauritius Lifestyle Top Grossing #2, with zero ratings. Small-country category charts have a very low bar: a few dozen downloads and a few purchases can put you near the top. Of the 101 countries where it charted, 50 were on the Top Grossing chart, which means people really are buying coins. The third-party data site AppGazers estimates its October revenue between $21k and $172k, with 44k to 200k downloads (model estimates, very wide range).

There are signs of paid acquisition too. The privacy label declares "identifiers used to track you", which usually means an ad attribution tool is integrated, and the charting started before the ratings spike. But we found no Berk or Sube ads in the public Meta or TikTok ad libraries. They may be running Google or Apple search ads, or spending in regions that aren't indexed (unverified). Nobody is discussing it on TikTok, X, or in the news.

Where the money comes from

The money comes from a small number of people who pay a lot to chat. In one-on-one paid chat, revenue depends on a few users repeatedly topping up, with the highest tier at $99.99, which is why it charts on Top Grossing more broadly than Top Free.

Beyond Apple in-app purchase there's an offline route too. In Oct 29 a Turkish user gave one star: "I bought tokens by bank transfer (EFT), they never added them... and they wanted my national ID number and date of birth. Don't trust them, don't fill it in." Voice and video chat products in the Middle East and Turkey often use this kind of channel, buying from "coin dealers" or agents. The review also shows it's already crossing compliance lines.

Who it's competing with

Its real competitors aren't ski apps. Slopes, Ski Tracks and Strava users are on the slopes in North America, Europe and Japan. Berk is pushing into Egypt and Pakistan, and the two never meet.

What it sells is the same as Chamet, Tumile, MICO, LivU and Azar, products that openly do dating and video chat. The only difference is the shell. Those products often get stuck in iOS review or throttled. Berk gets its listing by using an obscure hobby that a reviewer has no reason to doubt.

The more useful thing to look at is its siblings. Since June this year, at least 18 more "hobby community" apps have launched on the App Store, rated 8+, Lifestyle, and reached Top Grossing in dozens of countries:

Ceno, a stargazing app, has added ratings daily from Oct 30 at 118, 82, 74, 37, 29 and 17. Berk went 139, 94, 55, 30, 19 and 12. The same starting day and the same halving rhythm suggests the same operator, or the same review-buying service (inference). Olen, a rowing app, started in Nov 3, and Renna, a live-streaming app, started in Nov 4, running the same process. Berk isn't a standalone product. It's one account in a matrix of accounts.

If it were you

Verdict: we don't recommend following it. It got where it is not because of the product but because it hid paid stranger chat inside a ski-tool shell to get through review. Copying that means building hidden features on the App Store, which violates review guideline 2.3.1. If discovered, the app gets pulled, the developer account gets banned, and other apps under the same entity can be dragged down too. And the playbook is already being run by an operation at scale, rotating the shell from skiing to stargazing, handicrafts and rowing.

Who it fits: overseas social companies already running one-on-one video chat, with hosts or guild supply on the other end and overseas payment and customer support teams. For them this is competitive intelligence, not a new opportunity.

Who it doesn't fit: indie devs and small teams. You don't have the people on the other end of the chat (that's where the real value of this business sits), and you can't absorb the cost of getting banned, then rebuilding accounts and entities.

How to do it: the part worth learning is the clean half. If you have a legitimate tool or community app, pick a low-bar category (like Lifestyle), ship in multiple languages once, and go after the top spots on small-country category charts. These charts can put you in the top ten with a few dozen downloads, buying free exposure as a "charted in 100 countries". Then check which countries actually pay, and concentrate your spend there.

How to acquire users: its mix is small-country category charts plus concentrated review prompting, and possibly paid acquisition. We don't recommend copying the review part. Mass-charting in small-country categories and using Top Grossing to find paying countries can be applied directly to your own product.

When to move: there's no window for the sock-puppet package route. Each round of Apple cleanup can make the whole matrix disappear. The small-country category tactic isn't time-sensitive and won't expire.

What would mean we got this wrong: ① If in three months Berk, Ceno and Olen are all still listed and Top Grossing charts still cover dozens of countries, Apple is enforcing this category more loosely than we assumed, and the matrix model lasts longer than it looks. ② If someone openly runs dating or chat (without hiding features) and similarly fills Top Grossing across dozens of countries on iOS, then demand is clearly big enough that the shell isn't the key, and the category deserves a fresh look. ③ Conversely, if these "hobby community" apps are pulled in batches within one or two months, that confirms the route doesn't go far.