By Ramesh Kandula
Nara Lokesh, who has been served notices by Enforcement Directorate, calls himself a serial entrepreneur and investor. The 29-year-old son of Chandrababu Naidu is presently Executive Director at Heritage Foods Ltd.
Lokesh earned MBA from Stanford University, USA, and Bachelor of Science with specialization in Management Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Lokesh was Management Trainee in General Electric from May 2002 to August 2002 and Daimler Chrysler AG from May 2003 to August 2003. Later he worked as the Junior Professional Associate with the World Bank.
He has been an Executive Director Heritage Foods, one of the largest private sector dairy enterprises in the South since July 2008. His total annual compensation currently is Rs 40 lakhs per year.
He lists his specialities as Competitive analysis, Entrepreneurial Financing, Branding and identity, and Start up operations.
Lokesh, who married Balakrishna’s daughter Brahmani in 2007, was in the news last year for dabbling in Studio N Channel but recently snapped connections with it. While his media foray did not go exactly as planned, Lokesh is known for his clinical approach and dedication for his work and is an ambitious businessman with plans to make it big in the corporate world.
He has been taking lot of interest in his father’s politics for the last few years, but currently his role is limited to be a sounding board to his father. Chandrababu has a lot of respect for his son’s opinions on various issues spanning from politics to business.
Lokesh’s political ambitions are not very clear at this stage as his focus has been more on expanding his business empire and spends most of his day in his Heritage Office at Punjagutta. But he is known to admire even his political opponents like Jagan for their tenacity and single-minded focus on goals.
The ED has now served notices on him asking him to explain the source of funding for his education in the US. The allegation has been that Satyam Ramalinga Raju had paid Rs 22 crore as donation to universities – Rs 10 crore to Carnegie Mellon and Rs 12 crore to Stanford -to facilitate Lokesh’s admission.
This is an unexpected twist for Lokesh as ED’s move is likely to have an impact on his business plans. Given that he is under ED scanner, Lokesh might go slow on his expansion drive.
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