A lakh is one hundred thousand and a crore is ten million. The Indian numbering system groups digits differently from the international one, which is why 50,00,000 and 5,000,000 are the same number written two ways.
One lakh is 100,000 - one hundred thousand. Written with Indian digit grouping it appears as 1,00,000.
One crore is 10,000,000 - ten million, or one hundred lakh. Written with Indian grouping it is 1,00,00,000.
The international system groups digits in threes throughout - 5,000,000. The Indian system groups the last three, then in twos above that - 50,00,000. Both describe the same quantity; only the separators move.
Ten. One million is 10 lakh, and one crore is 10 million. A billion is 100 crore.
Yes - they are standard in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Myanmar, covering well over 1.7 billion people between them. Property, salaries and government budgets across the region are quoted this way.
Divide by 100. One crore is one hundred lakh, so 250 lakh is 2.5 crore and 1 crore is 100 lakh. Going the other way, multiply crore by 100 to get lakh.
This is the conversion people reach for most often, because Indian property listings and salary figures switch between the two units without warning. A flat quoted at 85 lakh and one quoted at 1.2 crore are being described in the same system, and the second is a little over 40% more expensive.
One crore is 10 million. The relationship is exact, so 5 crore is 50 million and 25 crore is 250 million. In the other direction, one million is 0.1 crore, which is why a million rupees is a smaller sum than the word suggests to anyone used to thinking in crore.
One lakh is 0.1 million, or one tenth. Ten lakh make a million, which is the step most people find counter-intuitive, because the international system has no unit sitting where the lakh does.
| From | Equals |
|---|---|
| 1 lakh | 100,000 · 0.1 million · 0.01 crore |
| 10 lakh | 1,000,000 · 1 million · 0.1 crore |
| 100 lakh | 10,000,000 · 10 million · 1 crore |
| 1 crore | 10,000,000 · 10 million · 100 lakh |
| 10 crore | 100,000,000 · 100 million |
| 100 crore | 1,000,000,000 · 1 billion |
The digit separators are the part that causes real mistakes, not the arithmetic. Written the Indian way, one crore is 1,00,00,000. Written internationally it is 10,000,000. Both have eight digits, but the commas fall in different places, so scanning quickly it is easy to read one as the other and be out by a factor of ten.
The calculator above shows both groupings side by side for exactly this reason. If you are copying a figure out of a property listing or a budget document, check the separators rather than the digit count.