Numbering: Lakhs and Crores

You can get by pretty easily with English in India.  However, you might notice that they are not big fans of “thousands” and “millions.”  Instead, they refer to “lakhs” and “crores.”  The conversion is fairly simple:

1 lakh = 100,000

1 crore = 10,000,000

But you will notice that the commas in numbers appear in different places too.  For example, one lakh will be written like this:  1,00,000.  Three and a half crore like this:  3,50,00,000.  The funny thing is that if the number is less than one crore, it looks normal:  2,000.  Indeed, they do use “thousand” but whenever you might hear “Four hundred thousand” in America, it would be replaced by “Four lakh” in India. "One million" in America is "Ten lakh" in India.