BufferBox Inc. was a Canadian startup which provides you with an address for all your online orders, which in turns provide consumers with the convenience of picking up their online purchases 24/7. It was founded by Jay Shah, Aditya Bali and Mike McCauley, BufferBox’s mission was to make missed delivery notices a thing of the past. The team was of a total of 7 employees. BufferBox conducted the initial pilot trials at the University of Waterloo and later expanded the service to other areas.
In short, Bufferbox is a network of parcel pick-up stations that are conveniently located, allowing you to grab parcels securely and on your schedule!
Business Model:
- A person can shop online and can give his BufferBox address for delivery.
- He can create his personal buffer address (Kiosk kinda) using his mail id
- Online companies will ship to his BufferBox address.
- He can receive his package by using an unlock code, send on his mail or number anytime he wants.
Google acquired this startup in late 2012 at a rumored price of $25 million dollars and it provided additional resources to help the company grow. Google advised at the time of the acquisition that they planned on keeping the BufferBox brand active for the foreseeable future.
This was a huge business back then and the US post lost around 16 billion dollars in 2012. Failed delivery attempts were a costly dent on the balance sheet of e-commerce companies. Google possibly tried to get hold of this vertical. For Google, the addition of BufferBox could have augmented the company’s growing mobile commerce operations in the region, where most of the company’s mobile shopping products are built. Google wants to help reshape, and evolve, the world. Acquiring Bufferbox could be a part of this great master plan.
But Google’s always had larger aspirations than delivery lockers, and now it looks like the company is fully integrating Bufferbox into its shopping team. They brought in the learnings, technology and expertise of the team to future Google Shopping products, like Google Shopping Express.” Google Shopping Express is the search giant’s same-day delivery service that’s currently offered in San Francisco, and it’s a natural extension of what the BufferBox team was working on. Google closed BufferBox in February.
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