The New Indian Currency Symbol

Are you bored typing every time Rs for representing ruppes, have you ever felt that Indian currency should have a unique symbol just like "$" for dollar? Then here is a news for you - The Indian rupee will soon have a unique symbol — a blend of the Devanagri 'Ra' and Roman 'R' — joining elite currencies like the US dollar, euro, British pound and Japanese yen in having a distinct identity.The new symbol, designed by IIT post-graduate D. Uday Kumar was approved by the Union Cabinet today.

The symbol will be printed or embossed on currency notes or coins, Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters after the Cabinet meeting.Mr. Kumar’s entry was chosen from among 3,000 designs competing for the currency symbol. He will get an award of Rs. 2.5 lakhs.Ms. Soni said the government will try that the symbol is adopted within six months in the country and globally within 18 to 24 months.

But the question in everyone's mind is how and when do we get to type the new symbol?For widespread usage, the new symbol has to be accepted by the Unicode Consortium's Unicode Technical Committee that is responsible for the development and maintenance of the Unicode Standard, including the Unicode Character Database.

While the Government of India can mandate hardware manufacturers to include the symbol in keyboards, it can also be accessed through assigned keyboard combination or via the operating system's Character Map, post approval from the Unicode Consortium. Software manufacturers can include the symbol in their new updates. 

But you don't necessarily need to wait for the official standards approval to use the new Rupee symbol. Soon typographers will release fonts that include the symbol. But these fonts might not be universally supported.

Moreover, you can build your own font for the new Rupee symbol using free online font-creation tools.