Last week, India unveiled a symbol for its rupee currency that it hopes will become as globally recognised as signs for the dollar, the yen, the pound and the euro.

Ministers made their final decision at a cabinet meeting after examining a shortlist of five designs inspired by the letter "R" in the Roman alphabet and "Ra" from the ancient Devanagari script used in Hindi.

The rupee is currently referred to by the abbreviations "Rs", "Re" or "INR", though it remains uncertain whether the new symbol will be widely taken up.

Udaya Kumar, a post-graduate student at the Indian Institute of Technology, submitted the design which beat 3,000 other entries in a national competition to win a cash prize of 250,000 rupees (5,350 dollars).