India gets new rupee symbol

India finally gets a new symbol for rupee that will standardise the expression for the currency in different languages, both within and outside the country.

India has finally got a new symbol to denote its currency, the rupee.

More than a year after the government announced a competition for coming up with a symbol for the rupee, the Union cabinet on July 15 approved a symbol which is a combination of the Roman ‘R’ without the vertical stroke and the Devnagri letter ‘ra’.

The symbol will standardise the expression for the rupee in different languages, both within and outside the country. Also, it would better distinguish the currency from that of countries whose currencies are also designated rupee or rupiah — Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

The design is the brainchild of Bombay IIT postgraduate D Udaya Kumar, who met finance minister Pranab Mukherjee after the cabinet decision. He will receive a prize of $5,350 (£3,500).

“This is possibly the greatest achievement of my life,” D Udaya Kumar, the winner of the contest, told Economic Times. He starts work on July 16 as an assistant professor in the department of design at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

A special jury, comprising representatives of the Union government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and prominent art institutes like the National Institute of Design and the JJ Institute of Applied Art, presented the final choice to the cabinet after several rounds of short-listing.

The government announced it had selected one of five short-listed designs it hopes will become as recognisable as the shorthand for the dollar, the yen and the euro.

“It denotes the robustness of the Indian economy,” said Union information and broadcasting minister Ambika Soni. However, no decision has been taken to emboss the new symbol on currency notes, she said.

The UPA government is talking of a six-month period for the adoption of the rupee symbol within the country and 18 months to two years for international use

Last year, the government invited entries for a contest to come up with a globally recognisable sign for the currency. Normally the rupee is designated by R or INR. The response to the competition was overwhelming, with 2,468 people/organisations found eligible for the first round. In the second round, 176 candidates were announced.