NEW DELHI — The Indian rupee joined the U.S. dollar, the British pound, the euro and the Japanese yen on Thursday when it got its very own symbol.

The rupee’s new rune is a modification of a letter in the Devanagari script, which is used to write Hindi, India’s official language. It was designed by D. Udaya Kumar, a student at the Indian Institute of Technology, who studied typography, scripts and ancient printing methods. It looks like a capital letter R, minus its vertical leg, and with two added horizontal lines through the upper, curved portion.

Image D. Udaya Kumar, a research scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, displays the new symbol for the rupee, which he designed. Credit... Associated Press

Mr. Kumar’s winning entry was picked from more than 3,000 submissions and five finalists, and approved by the India’s top government ministers on Thursday. Mr. Kumar, who begins teaching as an assistant professor at his alma mater on Friday, told a local news channel it was a “great honor” to be part of India’s history. He takes home a prize of 250,000 rupees, or about $5,363.