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Today’s episode is a special one to celebrate the opening of EF Bangalore and in it, EF CEO Matt Clifford interviews EF Bangalore General Manager Esha Tiwary, exploring her background and the Indian startup ecosystem. When EF Co-Founders Matt & Alice decided to scale last year they made a list of the places where they believed EF could have the highest impact. India was high on that list  because of its extraordinary talent pool – half of Silicon Valley  is run by entrepreneurs and executives who started life in India. On top of this, founders no longer believe they have to leave the country to have an extraordinary impact - from Flipkart to Paytm, it’s clear that you can build globally competitive tech companies in India. In October 2018, we announced the opening of the office in Bangalore and that’s now kicking off this month January 2019, using the same model that has proven successful in London and Singapore and which expanded to Berlin, Hong Kong and Paris in 2018. Esha is the perfect person to launch EF Bangalore. She studied Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur before doing an MBA at Harvard and throwing herself into the Indian startup ecosystem. She's previously worked for startups like Embrace, Cloudnine and Myntra, the largest fashion ecommerce player in India. She’s even had the experience of starting an accelerator with GSF.  In this episode Matt and Esha discuss: - Esha’s background and why she was so excited by EF’s mission - The Indian startup ecosystem and the opportunities in Bangalore and beyond - The comparative advantages of the different startup ecosystems that EF is involved in across Europe and Asia  This was a fascinating and wide ranging conversation offering a peek behind the curtain at EF and insight into the Indian startup ecosystem.