One lakh? One crore? One lakh crore?
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Difference in Indian and English number systems
Although English is used prevalently in the Indian professional societies. Often foreigners are confused when they read some financial news or financial reports. What is a lakh and what is a crore? How many zeros are there in one crore? Or in one lakh? How come the commas in the number seem to be misplaced?
Below is a conversion table between English and Indian number systems that will clear all your confusion.
|
Number |
English |
Indian Transliteration |
Indian way of writing number |
|
1,000 |
One Thousand |
One Thousand |
1000 |
|
100,000 |
One Hundred Thousand |
One Lakh |
1,00,000 |
|
1,000,000 |
One Million |
Ten Lakh |
10,00,000 |
|
10,000,000 |
Ten Million |
One crore |
1,00,00,000 |
|
1,000,000,000,000 |
One Trillion |
One Lakh Crore |
10,00,00,00,00,000 |
As you can see, the Western system separates a number into sets of three digits, while the Indian system separates the last three digits first just like the Western system, and the rest into sets of two digits.
The Chinese have a totally different system. To find out more, please see Western and Chinese number systems.