3 min readHyderabadJun 22, 2026 06:34 AM IST
First published on: Jun 22, 2026 at 05:20 AM IST
The Andhra Pradesh government has been strongly pushing for global IT companies to invest in the state, especially positioning Visakhapatnam as an IT hub. Leading the push is Nara Lokesh, National Working President of the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), who is in his second stint as the state’s IT Minister.
Lokesh will be the guest at the Express Adda in New Delhi on Monday. He will be in conversation with Vandita Mishra, National Opinion Editor, The Indian Express.
Lokesh had kick-started the process to turn Andhra Pradesh into an IT destination in his first term, from 2017 to 2019. In his second stint, starting in 2024, he has attracted several companies to the state, with Google announcing last October that it would invest $15 billion to develop an AI hub, its largest outside the US, in Visakhapatnam.
The son of Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, Lokesh is also the minister of Real Time Governance and Human Resources Development.
Lokesh is also at the forefront of a plan to regulate social media access to children between 13 and 16 years of age in Andhra Pradesh, and to ban social media for those below 13, as well as to prevent the online abuse and harassment of women.
Among the challenges he faces is the widespread migration of new graduates from the state, with many leaving for Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and other destinations in search of tech jobs as soon as they finish their course in Andhra Pradesh.
He did his MBA from Stanford University and stayed away from active politics until 2013. On May 27, 2013, Chandrababu Naidu formally made Lokesh the head of TDP’s Youth Wing and put him in charge of the Cadre Welfare Fund. After the TDP swept to power in newly created Andhra Pradesh following the bifurcation of the erstwhile state, Naidu reconstituted the TDP Politburo and inducted Lokesh into the Central Committee in October 2015, making him party general secretary. In 2017, he was nominated to the Legislative Council and inducted into the Cabinet as IT, Panchayati Raj and Rural Development minister.
In May 2019, in his maiden electoral fight, he contested from the Mangalagiri Assembly constituency, but lost to the YSRCP’s A Ramakrishna Reddy by a margin of 5,337 votes. In 2024, he contested from Mangalagiri again and won by over 91,000 votes.
The Express Adda is a series of informal interactions organised by The Indian Express Group and features those at the centre of change.
Previous guests include External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways and MSMEs Nitin Gadkari, Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen, Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, philanthropist Bill Gates, and motivational strategist Gaur Gopal Das.
TDP leader Nara Lokesh 
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