Stalin drops rupee symbol: The Tamil Nadu man who designed the sign and his DMK connection

NEW DELHI: Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin dropped the rupee symbol in the state budget on Thursday, replacing it with Tamil letter amid row over "Hindi imposition" with the BJP-led Central government. The DMK government replaced "₹" with the Tamil script "ரூ" in the logo for the state's 2025-26 budget.
In return, the BJP quickly informed Stalin about the Tamil Nadu man who designed the dropped rupee symbol and calling the DMK government's move "stupid".
Also read: Stalin government replaces Rupee symbol with Tamil letter in state budget amid language row
Who designed rupee symbol?
The current rupee symbol was designed by a Tamilian designer Udaya Kumar.
Meanwhile, BJP's Tamil Nadu chief K Annamalai on X said, "The DMK government's state budget for 2025-26 has replaced the Rupee symbol, which was designed by a Tamilian and adopted nationwide as part of our currency. The creator of the symbol, Thiru Udhay Kumar, is the son of a former DMK MLA."

The second of four children, Udaya Kumar was born to N Dharmalingam, a contractor, and Jayalakshmi in 1978 in Chennai. While doing his bachelor's in architecture from Anna University, he designed posters and publications that helped him define his calling — visual design.
"I realised Indian scripts don't have their design repertoire. After two years of trying to create something new in Tamil typography, I realised that I shouldn't work on my own. I needed expert guidance and hence, came to Industrial Design Centre at IIT-Bombay," Kumar told TOI in an earlier interview.
How Udaya Kumar designed rupee symbol?
Designing the simple-looking Indian rupee symbol did not come easy for Udaya Kumar.
"I spent endless nights on trial and error. The symbol had to have universal design features while staying Indian in spirit," Kumar told TOI.
That explains the propensity of his symbol towards the Latin letter form, 'R' for rupee, and the stroke across the top curve, parallel to the 'shirorekha', the line heading the alphabet in Devanagari script. "Most international currencies have double strokes such as the Australian dollar, Korean yen, the Euro or the Lira. The feature pronounce its identity as a currency," he said.