Zaun Bhana to lead MSP M&A in ANZ for Evergreen

After 21 years at Perth-based Leap Consulting, Zaun Bhana has joined US-based Evergreen as director of MSP M&A for ANZ.

Bhana is the first Australian-based employee of Evergreen, which has acquired multiple Australian IT firms and has more than 100 MSPs in its global portfolio.

Evergreen already had a regional presence in its Lyra Technology Group subsidiary, which has regional ANZ CEO Waruna Kirimetiyawa and operations and finance associate Claire Reynolds as representatives in New Zealand.

Bhana got “the nudge” to join Evergreen from Kirimetiyawa, who is also managing director of Lancom Technology, which Evergreen acquired last year in its first foray into the ANZ region.

Meeting former ConnectWise CCO Craig Fulton, who joined Evergreen in 2023, and Evergreen vice president Sydney Hockett, also influenced his decision to join.

“I thought to myself, ‘Wow, there's a lot of people here that I know that are on the inside’. It just seemed like a great opportunity to join that growth and help them lead what’s happening down under.”

Bhana had seen Evergreen acquire four businesses in his IT Nation peer group.

“One of the things that attracted me is seeing an organisation that has an approach to holding MSPs, not integrating them, and then having them work with each other to grow that community and having learnings from across different geographies,” he told techpartner.news.

“We want to be a permanent home, so that means that they keep all their staff, culture, branding and everything else. For those owners who want to stay, they then get the benefit of having a regional CEO [via Lyra] who helps grow their business.

“Oftentimes, an MSP might not have a sales manager or someone who's helping grow the business, so Evergreen has its own approach to getting leaders to come in and work alongside the leaders that are already in the business.”

Earlier this year, Evergreen brought its ANZ MSPs, including Centrered and CT Group, to the US.

“[The ANZ MSPs] were some of the best performing MSPs [within Evergreen] and they were sharing back to some of the US MSPs in how to do business, how we're operating in cloud and different things we're doing with AI,” Bhana said.

Long-term Leap Consulting exit plan

Bhana has handed the reigns of Leap Consulting to his business partner of 20 years, Leigh McDonald, who has taken full ownership of the business.

The exit is part of a plan started “years ago”.

"I was very fortunate that Leigh and I had that conversation and talked about that transition and change in ownership, because I had one eye on what do I want to do next,” Bhana said.

His participation in peer groups, where “life and legacy” were among the topics of discussion, helped that planning. Bhana was the local facilitator of Australia's first HTG peer group (now IT Nation).

Bhana said he had wanted to continue contributing to “the community and the industry”.

He noted the challenge MSP’s face moving from ‘muscle and feeling’ as they grow. “By that I mean doing everything themselves and wearing multiple hats; they're the head of sales, head of service etc.” he explained.

“That has and continues to be a challenge in the market where – with thanks to cyber growing, cloud complexity and [overall] competition – it’s driving a lot more pressure into the MSP market.

“On top of that, they've got to find time to work on the business and grow it. They've got to build sales engines, marketing engines, new practices around AI, so all of those things add up to a lot of a lot of risk for businesses.”

“What we see at Evergreen” is those business owners wanting to “de-risk”. That could involve reducing client concentration, planning for succession and bringing in expertise, for example.

Business owners’ energy is also a factor. “A lot of MSP owners who have been going for 15, 20, 30 years – energy starts to become an issue for them,” Bhana said.

“Do they have the same spark that got them out of bed at year five as they have at year 25? I know some amazing MSP owners where that is absolutely the case, but I also know a lot where that's not.

“If you go to a conference, people don't often talk about that, because it's a personal admission, but it's there. I've had 15 peers that I've journeyed with in some way, shape or form, exit their businesses and some of them, [the reason] has been energy."

Having a voice from Western Australia

Reflecting on more than two decades at Leap Consulting, Bhana said one of the things he learned was the impact business owners can have helping other people, whether they be employees, suppliers, customers or vendors.

He was also proud of what Leap Consulting had achieved from Western Australia.

“WA is often so far away and so remote, so I think navigating the IT industry from afar and being able to have a voice from WA, not just to the east coast, but in some cases globally, is pretty rare, because most people look at Sydney and Melbourne as where the bulk of the channel business operates from,” he said.