The Financial Express caught up with Cramer while he was in Mumbai to study the impact of the regionalisation initiative on the Indian market. Excerpts:

What has been the impetus of CNN's regionalisation drive?
At CNNI, regionalisation means providing international news with a regional perspective. In short - `Global Reach, Local touch.' As part of the effort we have been investing in creating distinct programming for each of the four feeds we broadcast to. We are concentrating on making our programming more relevant and closer to the audience in order to drive viewership and ad revenues. We plan to continue investing in the initiative over the coming years.

How important is the Indian market to the CNN scheme of things? How do you propose to face up to competition from broadcasters like BBC who have twice the amount of reach you do in India?
India is critical to us from the journalists point of view. We are aiming for a substantial growth in the market. India is the only market where BBC has done better than we have. Which is more of a `Mark Tully factor' more than anything else. Where other broadcasters have been losing revenues in the past few years, CNNI has been growing on account of the regionalisation drive.

We have trebled the amount of coverage out of the Indian market over the last six to nine months. We have done particularly well in our coverage of Kargil and more recently of the cyclone in Orissa.

What are your impressions of the Indian audience and the market?
Indian viewers are more news and information technology savvy than ever. Part of my plan of visiting India is to exam the IT usage patterns in the country. We are looking at options from the Indian market for our premier website, CNN interactive.