The central government has finalized the symbol for the Indian Rupees after holding a country wide competition that invited people to draw up rupee symbols and send it to the government to consider.

The symbol is a letter from the devanagari script and has a hidden meaning. The symbol refers to the tricolour Indian flag and also depicts the equality sign that represents India's desire economic in equality.

The symbol will give a new face to the India currency and will also separate its identity from the currencies of neighboring countries like Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka that also use different types of Rupees.

The government has said that it will take about two years to put the symbol on the keyboards. Meanwhile, companies are in the race to cash in on the new symbol.

A Mangalore based company; Foradian Technologies Pvt Ltd has released a font called `Rupee_Foradian' which will allow users to type in the rupee symbol. The font is available for free from the company website.