Silver Lake buys stake in Conduit, giving Israeli investors 200x return

Yozma Venture Capital is in talks to sell its share of Conduit, an Israel-based company that creates user engagement tools, for more than $200 million, Globes reported Thursday.

A source tells VentureBeat the buyer is Silver Lake, a U.S. private equity firm, which is paying between $200 and $250 million for the stake of the company. Globes describes the firm as a “large foreign investment firm that has tens of billions of dollars in assets under management.”

Yozma invested $1.5 million the company back in 2006 for a 9 percent stake. With this latest deal, Yozma will see a 200 percent return on investment. Ofer Holdings Group will reap the greatest beneft; it owns more than 30 percent of Yozma.

Conduit offers the following three services to increase publisher’s user engagement: a community toolbar that boosts traffic and grows website communities; a mobile service that creates apps; and the Wibaya Bar, which promotes social engagement.  The company says that more than 260,000 publishers and 250 million end users in 120 countries use its services, including Major League Baseball and Groupon.