Home > News > Indian Rupee gets a Symbol

India’s currency Rupee finally got it’s own symbol. The Union Cabinet  on 15th July, 2010 approved the symbol – a cross between the Devnagiri ‘Ra’ and the Roman capital ‘R’ without the stem and two parallel lines running at the top. Design for the symbol was submitted by Shri D Udaya Kumar, who is with the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati. The new Rupee symbol would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and robustness of the Indian economy. This new symbol will be used by all individuals/entities within and outside India after its incorporation in Unicode Standard, ISO/IEC 10646 and IS 13194.

In view of the fact that the Indian economy has been expanding at a sustained high rate of growth, is steadily integrating with the global economy and India has emerged as a prime investment destination worldwide, it was decided to undertake an exercise for selecting a distinct and identifiable symbol for India Rupee (INR) like other major currencies such as US Dollar (USD), British Pound Sterling (GBP), the Japanese Yen (JPY) and the European Union (EU) Euro. A public competition was held amongst resident Indian citizens inviting entries for the symbol, which reflects and captures the Indian ethos and culture.  Over 3000 entries were received, which were evaluated by a Jury headed by the Deputy Governor, RBI, which also included experts from three reputed art and design Institutes.  The entries were presented to the Jury in such a manner that identity of the competitors was not revealed to the Jury members. The Jury selected five final entries and also gave its evaluation of these five entries to the Government to take a final decision.

The symbol will be included in the “Unicode Standard” for representation and processing of text, written in major scripts of the world to ensure that the Rupee symbol is easily displayed/printed in the electronic and print media as all the software companies provide support for this Standard.  Encoding in the Unicode Standard will also ensure encoding in the International standard ISO/IEC 10646 as both the organizations work closely with each other.

The symbol will also be included in the Indian Standards, viz. 13194:1991 – Indian Script Code for Information Interchange (ISCII) through an amendment to the existing list by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS).  The ISCII specifies various codes for Indian languages for processing on computers along with the key-board lay outs.

After encoding of the symbol in the Unicode Standard and National Standard, 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.