Vijayawada: AndhraPradesh is positioning as one of India’s fastest-emerging investment destinations, buoyed by strong political leadership, efficient project execution, and recent billion-dollar partnerships including Google’s data centre and ArcelorMittal’s steel plant, IT and HRD minister Nara Lokesh said in Melbourne on Friday.

Speaking at the CII Partnership Summit Roadshow, hosted by the Australia India Business Council at the Grand Hyatt in Melbourne, Lokesh said Andhra Pradesh’s appeal rests on three factors, “visionary leadership, execution discipline, and a national outlook with regional accountability.”

“Thirteen months of continuous effort lie behind the arrival of Google’s Data Hub in Andhra Pradesh,” Lokesh said, adding that he personally coordinated between state and central authorities to finalise the project. “We spoke directly with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to ensure policy alignment. This project not only brought Google to AP but helped India emerge as a global data centre hub.”

Lokesh said the government’s focus on “execution speed and transparency” has become a defining feature of Andhra’s investment model. “Once you partner with us, it’s not your project, it’s our project,” he said, noting that the State tracks each major project through a dedicated WhatsApp group linking ministers and senior officials to resolve bottlenecks in real time.

He cited the example of ArcelorMittal, which decided to locate the country’s largest steel plant in Andhra Pradesh after discussions held directly with company chairman Aditya Mittal. “We completed the groundwork in 15 months and will lay the foundation in November,” he said.

Over the past 16 months, Andhra Pradesh has attracted investment commitments worth Rs 10 lakh crore, Lokesh said, calling it “just the beginning.”

The minister highlighted that Andhra Pradesh’s leadership, under Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, has a proven record of delivering large-scale projects and influencing national reforms, from telecom liberalisation to digital payments and, most recently, data-centre policy. “We are a regional party with a national vision,” Lokesh said. “Our focus is on contributing to India’s growth while securing Andhra’s future.”

Lokesh, who also met executives from Cricket Victoria at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, discussed expanding the Andhra Premier League (APL) as a talent pipeline to the Indian Premier League (IPL). Five players from APL, including Sheikh Rashid, Tripurana Vijay, Nitish Reddy, Satyanarayana Raju, and Paila Avinash, were picked in the IPL 2025 mega auction, he said.

He proposed joint training camps and exchange programmes between Andhra and Victoria to develop youth and women’s cricket. Cricket Victoria representatives said they were exploring partnerships to launch cricket education diplomas and academies in India.