Wipro Launches Rupee-Ready Keyboard

Wipro Infotech, the India, Middle East and Africa, IT Business of Wipro Ltd, and a provider of IT and business transformation services, have announced the launch of its new Rupee-Ready keyboard which is standards compliant. This includes an end-to-end, standards-based solution for incorporation of the Rupee sign in the ICT environment. The announcement follows the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) notification on Jan 31st, on the national standard for incorporating the new Rupee symbol in the en-In QWERTY and INSCRIPT keyboard layout.

Wipro has made two changes to its keyboard to make it Rupee-Ready as per BIS norms. The new Rupee symbol appears along with the numeral key 4 and the dollar sign. The Alt key to the right of the spacebar has been renamed Alt Gr to differentiate it from the left Alt key. With the appropriate driver installed, the new Rupee symbol can be input by simultaneously pressing Alt Gr and 4 key. Wipro’s keyboard also sports the Rupee-Ready signage to clearly denote that the keyboard supports the Rupee sign as per DIT and BIS norms.

The company is not only Rupee-Ready in terms of hardware but also in terms of software. Wipro has developed a software driver based on its own research to input the Rupee symbol using the newly labelled keys. With this innovation, all enterprise customers of Wipro using Wipro desktops/laptops (running on Microsoft Windows Platform) can immediately start using the new Rupee symbol. The company said appropriate font updates may be necessary.

“It gives us great pride to rollout our standards compliant Rupee-Ready keyboards. The software driver being provided by us is the outcome of six weeks of research and is intended to hasten the speed of Rupee symbol adoption in India. Our extensive research on this subject is publicly available and we hope other ICT vendors will make use of this research to quickly enable the adoption of the Indian Rupee symbol in the ICT environment,” said Dr Sudarshan Murthy, General Manager, Applied Research, Wipro (and a member of the Department of Information Technology (DIT) committee on the Rupee symbol).

“It is a matter of pride that the Rupee symbol has finally found a position alongside the dollar on the ubiquitous keyboard. We are excited to lead this transition in the Indian market and have already started shipping limited numbers of the new keyboard to our customers in India. For our existing enterprise users, we will make our software driver available so that they can start using the Rupee symbol immediately,” said Ashok Tripathy, General Manager and Business Head, Wipro Systems and Technologies.