New Indian Rupee Symbol

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Designed by an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) postgraduate D. Udaya Kumar, the symbol was selected from among five shortlisted symbols before the cabinet, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters in New Delhi after the cabinet meeting.

“It is just a symbol,” she told reporters.

The symbol was selected following Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s statement during the budget presentation in February, to formalise a symbol for the Indian rupee, reflecting the Indian ethos and culture.

“With this, the rupee will join the select club of currencies, such as the US dollar, British pound sterling, euro and Japanese yen that have a clear distinguishing identity,” Mukherjee had earlier said.

The new symbol will be used by all individuals and entities after its incorporation in `Unicode Standard’, ‘ISO/IEC 10646’ and ‘IS 13194’, said a statement from the government.

Over 3,000 entries were received and a jury headed by a Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India zeroed in on five entries and gave its recommendation with evaluation to the cabinet, which has selected the current symbol presented by D Udaya Kumar, an IIT graduate.

“The symbol will standardize the expression for Indian Rupee in different languages, both within and outside the country,” said the statement. The symbol will now distinguish the Indian currency from those countries whose currencies are also designated as Rupee or Rupiah, such as Pakistan Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

The symbol will be included in the “Unicode Standard”, written in major scripts of the world to ensure that it is easily displayed or printed in the electronic and print media.

After encoding of the symbol in the Unicode Standard and National Standard, India’s IT companies lobby group NASSCOM will approach software development companies for incorporating the Rupee symbol in their operative software, as a new programme or as an update, to enable the computer users worldwide to use the symbol even if it is not embedded on the keyboards, said the statement.

The encoding of the rupee symbol in the Indian Standards is estimated to take about six months while encoding in the Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646 will take about 18 months to two years.