The Union Cabinet today approved the symbol for the Indian Rupee. This symbol will be used by all individuals/entities within and outside India after its incorporation in `Unicode Standard’, ‘ISO/IEC 10646’ and ‘IS 13194’.

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 standardize the expression for Indian Rupee in different languages, both within and outside the country.  It would better 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” 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 of Indian Rupee approved by the Union Cabinet  on 15th July, 2010.  The Design for the symbol was submitted by Shri D Udaya Kumar.