A unique Symbol for Indian Rupee

Indian Rupee has now its own symbol like other major global currencies US dollar, British pound-sterling, Euro and Japanese yen. Rupee is no...

Indian Rupee has now its own symbol like other major global currencies US dollar, British pound-sterling, Euro and Japanese yen. Rupee is now the fifth currency in the world to have a unique identity. The symbol will reflect the Indian ethos and culture.

The Union Cabinet on Thursday approved the design selected by a team headed by Reserve Bank Deputy Governor. The new Symbol is designed by D Udaya Kumar, a Bombay IIT post-graduate Kumar, who will join the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati today. The Government of India announced a public contest to pick up a sign that will represent the currency of India before one year. From 3,000 designs competing for the currency symbol, Kumar's design is selected. According to him the design is based on the Tricolour, with two lines at the top and white space in between representing the Indian flag. He will be awarded Rs. 2.5 lakh by the Finance Ministry.

 The new rupee symbol is a blend of Roman letters 'R', and Devanagari  alaphabet 'ra'. With the new symbol,Indian currency  will  now be distinguished from countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia also use the word "rupee" or "rupiah" to identify their respective currencies. New Symbol would be included in the 'Unicode Standard' that allows text data to be interchanged globally without conflict and can be easily displayed and printed in the electronic and print media.

To integrate the new rupee with the mainstream, Nasscom will approach IT firms to embed the symbol in their software package so that even if it is not embedded on the keyboards it can be used globally.  The adoption of Rupee symbol in India is estimated to take about six months and 24 months globally. Microsoft is ready to include the new symbol in the next release once the Unicode consortium gives its nod and vendors get notification of the same.