Every year, under the name of a “Davos tour,” Chandrababu Naidu and his son Lokesh create a lot of hype. In the past, Chandrababu has visited Davos five times and Lokesh twice. Yet, not a single rupee of real investment has come in. No global giant has arrived. Still, the yellow media continues to beat the drums for them and project them as great achievers. Now once again, father and son have gone to Davos, repeating the same show.
Despite visiting Davos five times earlier and his son Lokesh twice, Chandrababu Naidu has failed miserably in attracting investments. In 2026, once again, father and son went to Davos. Even though their performance in Davos tours has been extremely poor, yellow media is going overboard in publicity to artificially project them as champions.
Only propaganda… Where are the global companies?
Whenever they are in power, Chandrababu and Lokesh go to Davos once a year in the name of attracting investments—and return empty-handed. Between 2014 and 2019, Chandrababu repeatedly went to Davos, creating huge hype that global giants were coming to Andhra Pradesh, raising people’s expectations—only to ultimately disappoint them.
He created a big show around agreements with companies like Lockheed Martin (defence equipment), high-speed rail projects, hybrid cloud firms, Saudi Aramco, Airbus, and Alibaba. But in reality, Chandrababu failed to bring even a single global giant to Andhra Pradesh. Last year too, when Chandrababu and Lokesh went to Davos, the investments they brought back were zero.
So people are now questioning: what exactly did father and son achieve that they have gone once again to Davos? Not only have their Davos tours failed to bring investments, but crores of public money are being wasted on foreign travel, flights, hospitality, and promotional expenses.
Photographs with celebrities… agreements that existed only in newspapers
Intellectuals are asking whether Chandrababu can point to even one project that actually came to the state as a result of his Davos visits, apart from taking photographs with global tycoons and releasing publicity. They are questioning what happened to all the investment agreements announced during the Davos tours between 2014 and 2019.
From 2015 to 2018, Chandrababu went to Davos four consecutive times. In the election year 2019, then IT Minister Nara Lokesh led a delegation to Davos. Officials who participated in those visits later stated that nearly ₹55 crore of public money was spent on Davos trips, but not even ₹1 crore of investment came in.
After state bifurcation, when Chandrababu first went to Davos, he widely publicised that he met Microsoft founder Bill Gates after ten years and held discussions with CEO Satya Nadella, claiming Microsoft was keen to set up a Business Development Centre in Visakhapatnam. Even after ten years, Microsoft has not shown any interest in Andhra Pradesh.
Similarly, there was massive publicity that companies like Infosys, Wipro, Deloitte, Pega Systems and others were coming to the state. But not a single project was actually brought to Andhra Pradesh during Chandrababu’s tenure.
Crores wasted on flight tickets and advertisements
In 2025, a delegation including Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu, ministers Nara Lokesh and TG Bharat, and IAS officers Karthikeya Mishra, Piyush Kumar, N. Yuvaraj, Saikanth Varma, Vikas Marmath, and Chief Secretary O. Sreenath Bandaru went to the Davos summit. Crores of rupees were spent on their travel alone. Additional crores were paid to national media houses for large-scale publicity of the event.
When questioned last year about returning from Davos without any investments, Chandrababu even counter-attacked critics by asking sarcastically whether there was any rule that MoUs must be signed at Davos. Despite that, he once again went to Davos, spending crores of public money.
YS Jagan’s single visit created record-breaking agreements
In contrast, Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy attended the Davos summit in 2022 as Chief Minister, spending only ₹11.9 crore with a 19-member official delegation. He not only signed investment agreements worth ₹1.26 lakh crore but also ensured their rapid grounding, creating a record.
When Tech Mahindra CEO C.P. Gurnani mentioned interest in setting up a bio-ethanol plant during a courtesy meeting, land was immediately allotted in Rajamahendravaram. A ₹200-crore unit was established and production was also commenced.
Similarly, at Davos, agreements were signed and implemented for:
- Adani Group’s green energy projects worth ₹60,000 crore
- Greenko projects worth ₹37,000 crore
- Aurobindo projects worth ₹28,000 crore
While Y.S. Jagan quietly converted investments into reality without publicity hype, Chandrababu, who met Tata Group Chairman Cyrus Mistry in Davos in 2016, ultimately achieved nothing.
