Rupee Symbol Designer Udaya Kumar: From DMK Origins to National Symbol

D. Udaya Kumar, the creator of India's national rupee symbol, is the son of N. Dharmalingam, a retired DMK legislative assembly member from Rishivandiyam constituency in Tamil Nadu. Kumar, now Head of the Department of Design at IIT Guwahati, designed the rupee symbol in 2010 by combining the Devanagari letter 'Ra' with the Roman 'R'. His winning design, picked from thousands of submissions, features motifs of the Indian tricolor as well as the "equals" sign, representing economic equality. Kumar's education involves a BArch from Anna University, an MDes and a PhD from IIT Bombay. His interests range from Tamil typography, where he created the "Parashakti" font and wrote a book on Tamil typography.

 

Source: Economic Times, Wikipedia