Airbus is in conversation with Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed new airline Akasa for an aircraft procurement deal, a top official of the European plane manufacturer has said.

Akasa has been in discussions with US plane manufacturer Boeing to procure its B737 Max planes, multiple media reports had said two months ago.

Airbus’s A320 series of aircraft competes with Boeing’s B737 series of planes in the aviation market.

“We are not in the business of countering offers but we are having conversations with Akasa. Of course, we do,” Airbus’s chief commercial officer Christian Scherer replied, asked if he plans to counter the offer put by Boeing to Akasa.

Akasa is backed by ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and has former IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh on its board. It aims to start operations by the summer of 2022 and plans to operate approximately 70 planes in the next four years.

When asked if he can tell what stage the negotiations are with Akasa, Scherer replied: “That is really private. What I can tell you is that when you start an airline in India, what is the benchmark you are looking at. It is pretty obvious, isn’t it? It is IndiGo and to some extent Go First and SpiceJet, but the big guy is IndiGo.”

IndiGo flies the most successful single aisle airplane in the world and it is also the most modern, which is the A320 and now the A321, he mentioned.