'I designed the Indian rupee symbol'

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In 2009, the Indian government launched a national competition to find a design for the Indian rupee.

With more than 3,000 entries and five finalists, the winning design was announced on 15 July 2010.

The designer was by Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam, a student at the Industrial Design Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He speaks to Surya Elango.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.

(Photo: Udaya Kumar Dharmalingam on 15 July 2010. Credit: Abhijit Bhatlekar/Mint via Getty Images)

Transcript

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1:16.9	I'm taking you back 15 years to the moment India announced for the first time in its history that it will be introducing a symbol for its currency, the rupee.
1:21.6	In the 15th July 2010, it was directly announced in the national media.
1:27.0	The rupee today joined the ranks of the dollar, pound, euro and yen.
1:31.6	That's how it was reported by New Delhi Television Limited, known as NDTV, a prominent Indian news network.
1:38.0	The then broadcasting minister, Mrs. Ambika Soni, she announced, she took my design and then she announced to the public
1:45.4	that this is going to be used as the rupee symbol.
1:48.4	The symbol will standardise the expression of for Indian rupee in different languages,
	...

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