If you happen to read Indian newspapers, you quickly need to know what lakhs and crores mean. Lakhs especially are ubiquitous. Well, they are alternative ways of designating large numbers.
In the Indian numbering system, numbers above a thousand are grouped by two decimal places instead of three decimal places as we are used to. And so millions are rarely used here, people refer to a million as 10 lakhs. They don’t say ten million either, but one crore.
The writing is changed as well to reflect this; the comma is placed for lakhs and crores instead of millions.
In short…
1 lakh = 1,00,000
1 crore = 1,00,00,000
Yes, it’s a bit confusing at times…
