The Air India sale to the Tata group is more or less finalised. The government will hand over the airline to the Tata group for whatever money the Tatas offer. This is because the government does not have any more money to pump into the ailing airline, which requires huge fund infusions to stay viable.

The other bidder, Interups, known more as the ‘joker in the pack’, has withdrawn from the race. Interups, with a puny market cap of $28 million, says that instead of filing its bid it chose to support the employees who have already filed their bid as they received legal opinion that filing a separate bid with the same affiliation may disqualify the interested bidder. The relatively unknown fund with no track record had earlier said it would invest billions of dollars in Air India. But as the media started writing about its chequered past, it quit the race for the airline.