Chandra Babu Naidu, India’s IT chief minister of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, is visiting the US next week to meet with potential investors. He will be accompanied by members of the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII). The delegation will meet Microsoft chief Bill Gates; Dan Burnham and John Weaver of Raytheon International; Jeffery Sachs from the Harvard Institute of International Development; Rod Brooks from MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab; and GE chairman, Jack Welch. Naidu will also meet representatives from Netscape Communications Corp, Oracle Corp, Intel Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc among others, to convince them to invest in his state by following Microsoft’s example of setting up a software development center. Meanwhile, Microsoft and Intel have taken equity stakes in SaveSmart Inc, a California-based internet service firm owned by Ashok Narasimhan. Narasimhan was the first president of Wipro Infotech, one of India’s largest IT firms, and set up its software division. SaveSmart delivers on-line personalized promotions to consumers. He declined to disclose the stakes taken by the two firms or SaveSmart’s revenues.
