The once lowly Indian Rupee has a smart new symbol as India marches on with becoming an economic power.

The Government of India had invited suggestions from the public in April-May last year about ideas for what the new symbol should look like.

The design that was chosen was from 32-year-old architect from Chennai, D. Udaya Kumar, who did his Master’s in design from Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. It has been approved by the Cabinet.

The decision to finalise the new symbol began after Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee’s announcement in his budget speech this year that he would “formalize a symbol for the Indian Rupee which reflects and captures Indian ethos and culture.”

In June, the government shortlisted five designs from a symbol design contest which carried a prize money of Rs. 250,000.

Kumar, the designer, is very proud of the fact that he is giving India its currency sign in consonance with Pounds, Euros and USD.

Kumar told the media that he was not interest in economics or money matters at all, but he jumped at the opportunity to design
the symbol of the Indian Rupee.

The symbol is an amalgamation of Devnagri letter ‘Ra’ and capital ‘R’ (Roman) which the Union Cabinet has approved as the symbol of the Indian Rupee on Thursday.

The Rupee has an identity now and this symbol has to be incorporated in all the computers’ key boards, the world over.

The techies say that this is not a difficult preposition at all. Suitable guidelines are awaited from the Bureau of Indian Standards, and the symbol will be rolled out with a simple internal coding in computers, probably on the key which has a single function.

However, Mangalore based Foradian Technologies Pvt Ltd. Has created a font called Rupee_Foradian and can be downloaded free from the company’s blogsite – http://blog.foradian.com – and used for free.

“With this, the Indian currency has arrived on the international platform,” Ambika Soni, India’s information and broadcasting minister, said at a press conference last Thursday. The new symbol will be used globally like the symbols for the dollar, the euro, the pound and the yen.

Ms. Soni said the new symbol will distinguish the India currency from other countries.

“It is a universal acceptance of the Indian currency according to international standards,” she added. “This will help India gain a stronghold internationally.”

India is the second largest developing economy in the world and as and when the Rupee becomes convertible with other currencies of the world, the symbol would be of immense help.