CMs of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana depute sons to woo investors in US with contrasting results

It is a tale of two sons, scions rather. And the contrast could not be more telling. It is perhaps coincidental that the two young leaders – Kalvakuntla Taraka Rama Rao (KTR), son of K Chandrasekhar Rao, Chief Minister of Telangana; and Nara Lokesh, son of N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh — embarked on their journey to the United States almost the same time. KTR, is Minister for Information Technology and Panchayat Raj in the Government of Telangana. Thus, his visit has an ‘official’ tag to it. Nara Lokesh is a coordinator of welfare fund of party workers in the Telugu Desam Party. His visit is not sponsored by the Government of Andhra Pradesh. But two officials – S Abheeshta, Officer on Special Duty to the chief minister, and an IAS officer Kartikeya Mishra – have officially been deputed to the US. Incidentally, they are always around wherever Lokesh is addressing a meeting or calling on a dignitary. [caption id=“attachment_2248072” align=“alignleft” width=“380” class=" “]  K Chandrashekhar Rao (right) and N Chandrababu Naidu.[/caption] KTR is meeting several industrialists and having his official delegates sign the memoranda of understanding with the US companies which are coming forth to invest in Telangana. Lokesh’s mission doesn’t entail signing of deals. He is soliciting support for building Andhra Pradesh through numerous meetings and social gatherings and also through his twitter hash tag #LteUSBuildAP. The standard admirers of Mr Chandrababu Naidu are taking part enthusiastically and are probably taking the lead in amplifying the “donate for your motherland” slogan espoused by Lokesh. KTR did not require any search engine optimisation (SEO) to promote the news of his team signing an MoU with a search engine behemoth Google for the establishment of its largest office outside the US in Hyderabad. It did not require any special effort for social media optimisation and social media marketing of the news that naturally was frontpaged, thanks to the size of the investment – Rs. 1,000 crore or a sixth of a billion US dollars – and the commitment to double the headcount on the Hyderabad campus. Impressing Larry Page or Eric Schmidt to give their nod isn’t as easy as it is to key in a search term that returns multitudes of options. But KTR did it. He may not have met Larry or Eric, but proved that he made sense out of ‘AdSense’ rather than MadSense. Lokesh on the other hand met some politicos and a couple of governors – Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Greg Abbott of Texas, apart from some businessmen, especially those from Indian origin, including the likes of Vinod Khosla. He also met Shantanu Narayen (CEO of Adobe Systems), Vishal Sikka (CEO of Infosys), Paul Humphries (President of High Reliability Solutions, a business group at Flextronics), Wim Elfrink (Executive Vice President for Industry Solutions and Chief Globalisation Officer at Cisco). Lokesh wrote in his Facebook page: “The major reason for making the US trip was to drum up support for the ‘Smart Village – Smart Ward’ programme which is the brainchild of our leader #NCBN. The result has been nothing short of spectacular. Every Telugu rallied together to support a revolutionary idea that will change the face of rural Andhra Pradesh. More than 2400 villages were adopted by our Telugu brethren living in the States.” The fanfare demonstrated by the ‘NRI Telugu Desam Party’ by showering flower petals from a yellow-hued chopper when Lokesh was taken in a motorcade of Range Rovers, and the numerous ‘sentimental dialogues’ scripted exclusively to inspire the immigrant population to donate generously for developing their villages are being projected well on the well-orchestrated media canvass. The act of welcoming Lokesh in a carcade pompously on the streets of the foreign land, incidentally coincided with the birthday rally of one Ravi Teja, son of a local legislator in Vijayawada, where his overenthusiastic supporters broke all the traffic rules, leaving the officials high and dry. Enraged supporters of the Telugu Desam Party poured scorn on the two incidents on social media platforms. Even the party bosses had to hide their feelings and put up a sheepish smile when a parallel was drawn. But KTR’s meetings, though meticulously organised, drew the attention of national media in India and America and apparently did not require so much of hype and hoopla, for drawing the eyeballs, thus proving once again the oft-quoted fact on the world wide web – content is the king. He also logged onto the top brass of Oracle Corporation and secured an assurance from them on expanding their activities and offices in Hyderabad. KTR was the key note speaker at the NASSCOM’s Innotrek event that took place at SAP campus in Palo Alto, CA. Innotrek is NASSCOM’ s signature event under which the most promising young innovators from India are brought to the Silicon Valley where they interface with the investor community, mentors and their peers. Lokesh’s promotion of smart village sponorship programme “evoked an overwhelming” response – even staunch followers of the TDP too turned sarcastic on the social media. However, a California-based businessman, who is very close to the TDP, posted on Facebook: “(Rs) 200 Crores were raised during Chandra Babu visit in 2007. Reality barely 2 crores. 5,000 villages were adopted during Lokesh visit 2015, Reality…” Thus KTR shone in contrast with organic content and Lokesh was stuck with inroganic promotion of his activity in the US.