INDIAN RUPEE WILL HAVE ITS OWN SIGNATURE
Symbol designed by Dharma lingam Udaya Kumar, 31 years of age a research
scholar of IIT Mumbai has been selected as the icon of Indian currency rupee.
Joining the elite league of currencies with symbol, globally it’s the fifth
currency after USD, British Pounds, Euro, Japanese, to have symbol. This is to
be adopted in a six months’ time. The symbol will standardize the expression
for the Indian rupee in different languages, both within and outside the
country. This will distinguish Rupee from the currencies of
Uday Kumar designed symbol was selected from among people who had
participated in the competition. The competition was to create a symbol that
would reflect and express Indian ethos and culture. The entries were evaluated by the jury
appointed for this purpose, who had shortlisted five symbols for final
selection. The panel headed by the Deputy Governor of RBI, Usha Thorat. The new
symbol will be incorporated in ‘Unicode Standard,’ISO/IEC 10646 and IS 13194
Dharmalingam Udaya Kumar bagged a prize of Rupees Two Lakh Fifty
Thousand as winner and other runners got Rs 25000. The other finalist are
Jitesh Padmashali , an Advertising professional, J Irani , a Designer, Nandita C. Mehrotra , Lecturer in
Architectural Design at MIT , daughter of well know architect
Charles Correa and Shibin K , a teacher
from Kerala.
Udaya Kumar hails from Tondiarpet, Chennai born to Jayalaksmi and
Dharmalingam. Mr. Dharma lingam is former DMK MLA. Udaya Kumar did his schooling in La
Chateleine, Chennai .Graduated in Architecture from
What finally clinched in favour of his design was the usage of
Devanagiri script. According to Udaya Kumar the design was based on the Tri
colour with two lines at the top and white space in between. He wanted it to
represent Indian flag. A blend of Roman letter ‘R’ and Devenagiri script ‘Ra’
which represents rupiah, he said.
