Unlike the U.S., where the newspaper industry is imploding, India is one of the few places on the planet where print media is thriving. Print revenues in the country are expected to grow by 14 percent annually over the next four years, reaching $7 billion by 2012, according to a recent report from PricewaterhouseCoopers. But that doesn't mean Narisetti has a cakewalk ahead of him.

Other Western news- and business-oriented publications have followed the Journal into India, racing to find local partners in a quest to access new readers and advertisers. The International Herald Tribune, which is owned by the New York Times Co., has a content-sharing deal with a new paper, the Financial Chronicle, while the Financial Times recently announced a tie-up with cable channel TV18 India, meaning there will soon be seven major business dailies in India. No other country in the world has been able to sustain more than two, according to Narisetti.

To its credit, Mint has grown from an initial circulation of 80,000 in two cities to 120,000 readers in five cities in the past 18 months, and it also has a popular website, livemint.com. But its print edition lags far behind the market leader—the Economic Times, one of India's oldest and largest newspapers, with a circulation of over 1 million.

So far advertisers—which provide almost the entirety of a newspaper's revenue in India, where papers are sold below cost—have been slow to see Mint's value. In the first nine months of this year, HT Media lost about $7.4 million on Mint on an operating basis, although the company expects losses to narrow next year and projects the paper will break even in 2010. But some analysts are skeptical. Dipti Solanki, who covers media companies for PINC, an Indian investment bank, notes that Mint's expansion beyond Mumbai and Delhi has cost it more money than HT Media initially thought, and newsprint prices—especially the cost of the imported Canadian newsprint on which Mint is printed—are on the rise.

But Narisetti remains sanguine, at least for the next 10 years as India's newspaper market continues to grow.

"My view is that if you get readers and you have a sticky paper eventually you will get advertisers—the problem is, when is eventually?" he says.

Given these challenges, does Narisetti regret having left the Journal? "I expected to have a lot of moments of 'What the hell have I done?'" he says. "There have been some, [but] they've all been about living in India. Work has been pretty good."

And about Murdoch's takeover of Mint's partner? With the exception of the ouster of Steiger's successor Marcus Brauchli, whom Narisetti calls "the best managing editor the Journal could have ever had," he generally likes what Murdoch and his hand-picked managing editor Robert Thomson have done. "I was one of the few journalists who think that News Corp.'s acquisition of the Journal is good for the Journal's journalism," he says. "No matter what people say about Murdoch, he loves news—he invests in news."

Narisetti runs through a list of friends and former colleagues who have been promoted to top editing spots at the Journal since Murdoch purchased Dow Jones as proof that Murdoch hasn't gutted the place of talent.

One gets the sense that if this India thing doesn't work out, Narisetti will know who to call.