New Re symbol will appeal to all: designer

On a day when India finally got a symbol for the Rupee and joined a select club of countries whose currencies have an unique identity, CNN-IBN spoke to D Udaya Kumar, a postgraduate student of the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, who had designed the symbol.
CNN-IBN: Now that the symbol that you drew has been selected as the symbol that represents Indian Rupee, it must be a proud moment for you?

D Udaya Kumar: Certainly. I am really excited and thrilled. I can't find words to express my happiness.
CNN-IBN: Can you please explain to what it (the symbol) actually means?

D Udaya Kumar: I have given a lot of thought to this design. It is basically based on the letter 'ra' in Devnagri script. In that, I have just added a strikethrough line to represent Indian flag. And since I have incorporated the Devnagri script, it represents the Indianness of it because the top-line is quite unique and is not found in any other script. I have also tried to incorporate the Roman script 'R' within it for it to have an international appeal.

CNN-IBN: Few days back, we saw how a 22-year-old (Dr Tathagat Tulsi) became the youngest professor to join IIT-Bombay. You too are from the IIT. Is it the institution that pushes you to do these things?

D Udaya Kumar: Certainly. The environment here definitely gives us an advantage. It inspires one a lot when one sees his friends working hard and doing a great job. One is inspired to follow them, do a lot of work and achieve something. So, IIT-Bombay has immensely helped me, inspired me a lot and supported me with all my designs.

CNN-IBN: How significant is this new symbol for Indian rupee as well as Indian economy, from your perspective?

D Udaya Kumar: I think it is very much important that the Indian currency has a symbol because everywhere we see Dollar signs, Euro signs and Pound signs. Now that we also have a symbol, it would be seen all over the world.

CNN-IBN: You were one of the five persons whose symbols were shortlisted. You also got an opportunity to interact with them. How was that experience?

D Udaya Kumar: When five of us finalists were called to Delhi to make presentations, I got to share my design as well as see their designs. All the designs were really great and had their own uniqueness in them. It also made me look at my design with a different perspective. And though there were some commonalities between our designs; each one of our designs were excellent.
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 Bombay IIT post-graduate D Udaya Kumar, was approved by the cabinet today — reflecting that the Indian currency, backed by an over-trillion dollar economy, was finally making its presence felt on the international scene.

"It's a big statement on the Indian currency... The symbol would lend a distinctive character and identity to the currency and further highlight the strength and global face of the Indian economy," Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told reporters after the cabinet meeting.

Though the symbol will not be printed or embossed on currency notes or coins, it would be included in the 'Unicode Standard' and major scripts of the world to ensure that it is easily displayed and printed in the electronic and print media.

Among currencies with distinctive identities, only the pound sterling has its symbol printed on the notes.

Unicode is an international standard that allows text data to be interchanged globally without conflict. After incorporation in the global and Indian codes, the symbol would be used by all individuals and entities within and outside the country.

The symbol will be adopted in a span of six months in the country, and within 18 to 24 months globally, Soni said, adding that it will feature on computer keyboards and softwares for worldwide use.

Soni said that the symbol, which reflects the Indian ethos and culture, would help distinguish the currency from the rupee or rupiah of other countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Besides this, state governments would be asked to proactively promote the use of the new symbol, she added.

Kumar's entry was chosen from 3,000 designs competing for the currency symbol. He will get an award of Rs 2.5 lakh.

"It is a perfect blend of Indian and Roman letters — capital 'R' and Devanagri 'Ra' which represents rupaiah, to appeal to international and Indian audiences... My design is based on the tricolour, with two lines at the top and white space in between," a visibly-happy Kumar said.

The jury, which had sent the five short-listed entries for the cabinet's approval, was headed by a Reserve Bank Deputy Governor.

Design: India’s New Rupee Symbol

 New symbol for Indian Rupee designed by IIT Bombay alum

The Republic of India is unique in its extraordinary diversity of language and scripts. As many as seventeen different languages are represented on its Rupee note. How does one then reduce this diversity to a single symbol of our currency?

The chosen symbol is based on the Devanagari script using the letter Ra to serve as a mnemonic for the word Rupee. This is a fairly obvious idea — perhaps the first thing one would think of. It is hardly a surprise, then, that a large number of the thousands of entries submitted to the competition based their designs on the Devanagari Ra.

Of all the Indian scripts, the Devanagari is the most widely used. Besides Hindi, which is the most widely spoken language in India, variants of Devanagari are used across all the scripts in the North, including Gurmukhi, Marathi, Bengali, Assamese, etc. While the scripts of southern languages do not reflect the Devanagari infuence, it is acceptable in the south because of the legacy of Sanskrit.

If the mark is to have a semantic connect across the country, Devanagari is the only sensible choice. Again, the choice of the Ra character is an obvious one as it provides the phonetic connect with Ra for Rupee (like A for Apple). No other character could have been considered (for example P for Paisa, which has more or less lost its relevance, cannot be considered as a symbol for the Rupee).

Serendipitously, the Devanagari Ra also bears a resemblance to the letter R of the Latin alphabet, as it looks like a stylised R without the vertical stroke.

What makes the design work is the horizontal stroke which runs parallel to the top bar, which has been interpreted as an ‘equals to’ sign. This is what brings the otherwise nondescript Ra into the world of currency symbols.

This small intervention creates a formal connect with the visual vocabulary of other symbols such as the dollar, euro, pound and yen, all of which have strokes added on to traditional letterforms. Its resemblance to these universally recognised currency symbols makes this one credible, guaranteeing its entry to a club where the members have to look like they belong, where it is not appropriate for them to be disruptive.

Five designs that were short-listed by the jury and sent to the Cabinet for its approval

   For all these reasons, the chosen mark is appropriate to represent the rupee. However the process by which it was chosen is mystifying. The final logo was not one of the five designs that were short-listed by the jury and sent to the Cabinet for its approval. So where did it come from, and how did it become a contender after the short list was published? As in most cases of selection initiated by the Government, the process is unclear.

However, in this instance, the final design is a great improvement on the designs in the short list; so perhaps, just this once, the end justifies the means.

Sujata Keshavan is MD & Executive
Creative Director, Ray+Keshavan

New symbol for Indian Rupee designed by IIT Bombay alum
  
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 Bombay IIT post-graduate D Udaya Kumar, was approved by the cabinet reflecting the fact that the Indian currency, backed by an over-trillion dollar economy, was finally making its presence felt on the international scene.