Donald Trump Jr has arrived in New Delhi to sell luxury apartments and lavish attention on wealthy Indians who have already bought units in a Trump-branded development outside the Indian capital.

Newspaper ads carried in almost every major Indian newspaper promise that buyers who order apartments in the development by Thursday will receive “a conversation and dinner” with Mr Trump Jr a day later.

His father, US president Donald Trump, has pledged to avoid any new foreign business deals during his term in office to avoid potential ethical conflicts. While the projects that Mr Trump Jr is promoting in India were inked before his father was elected, ethics experts have long seen the use of the Trump name to promote even existing business ventures as tricky territory.

Mr Trump Jr poses with promoters of Trump Towers  (AP)
Mr Trump Jr poses with promoters of Trump Towers (AP)

The distinction between old and new projects can be hazy, they note, and new deals can be shoehorned into old.

Donald Trump Jr posed for photos on Tuesday morning in New Delhi with Indian developers building complexes in four cities.

Later in the week, he is scheduled to make a speech about Indo-Pacific relations at a New Delhi business summit, sharing the stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In Gurgaon, the sprawling and ever-growing New Delhi satellite city where a new Trump Towers will eventually rise, the construction site is just mountains of dirt and unruly shrubbery, one of many residential projects yet to be built. While there is almost nothing at the Trump construction site, a handful of guards insist on keeping journalists out of the area.

The Trump Organisation has licensing agreements with all its Indian business partners, who build the properties and acquire the Trump name in exchange for a fee.

A construction site near the proposed site for the Trump Towers in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi (AP)
A construction site near the proposed site for the Trump Towers in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi (AP)

The organisation has five projects in India, making it the brand’s largest market outside the United States. A luxury complex is already open in the central city of Pune, with other developments in varying stages of construction in the coastal cities of Mumbai and Kolkata, and two in a chrome-and-glass New Delhi suburb, Gurgaon.

The apartments are expensive — though not outrageously so in the overheated real estate world of India’s wealthy elite. An apartment in the Trump Towers complex in Gurgaon runs between 775,000 dollars (£573,000) and 1.5 million dollars (£1.07 million).

The rest of the details of Donald Trump Jr’s itinerary are not yet clear, despite repeated emails to the Trump Organisation and its Indian partner Tribeca. However, local media have reported that he is slated to visit other Trump projects across India.