How this instrument works
The Indian numbering system groups large numbers in twos after the first three digits, giving lakh (100,000, 10⁵) and crore (10,000,000, 10⁷) instead of the thousand-based grouping used in international English. That is why an amount written 12,345,678 in the international style is written 1,23,45,678 in the Indian style — one crore, twenty-three lakh, forty-five thousand, six hundred seventy-eight.
A lakh is always ten times smaller than a million by exactly the same amount every time: one million (1,000,000) equals precisely ten lakh (10,00,000), and a crore (1,00,00,000) equals precisely ten million. The relationship never drifts, because both are exact powers of ten expressed in different grouping conventions rather than different physical quantities.
Lakh descends from the Sanskrit lakṣa, a Gupta-era word that first meant 'mark' or 'target' before becoming the standard numeral for 100,000; crore comes from the Hindi karoṛ, itself rooted in the Sanskrit koṭi. Both terms are everyday vocabulary across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, appearing in news headlines, government budgets and property listings exactly the way English-language media use million and billion.
The Reserve Bank of India uses lakh and crore throughout its own published statistics — its annual report tables currency in circulation by volume in lakh of banknotes and by value in crore of rupees — and India's central government budget is presented the same way, so converting a million-denominated figure into lakh is often the first step in making a foreign number legible to an Indian audience.
- Enter your figure into the Millions field — 5 is preloaded to demonstrate the ×10 factor.
- Lakhs updates instantly beneath it, always exactly ten times whatever you entered in Millions.
- Going the other way, divide a lakh figure by 10 to return to millions, or by 1,000 to reach crore directly.
- For property or salary figures already quoted in lakh, skip straight to dividing by 10 rather than round-tripping through this page.
Worked example — a $5 million grant reported in lakh
An international development agency approves a $5 million grant for a state health program in India. Local news coverage quotes budgets in lakh and crore, so the newsroom enters 5 into Millions and reads 50 in Lakhs — the story runs as 'a grant worth 50 lakh dollars,' letting readers compare it directly against state health budgets that are always reported in the same units.
Scaled up, the same factor holds for any figure: 7.5 million converts to 75 lakh, and 1 million converts to exactly 10 lakh with nothing left over. Multiply any lakh result by 10 again and you reach crore — 50 lakh is one-half of 1 crore, since a crore is defined as 100 lakh.
Questions
How many lakh make one million?
Exactly ten. A lakh is 100,000 (10⁵) and a million is 1,000,000 (10⁶), so dividing a million by a lakh always gives 10 with nothing left over. The relationship is fixed by definition, not measured, so 1 million converts to 10 lakh at any level of precision you choose to display.
How many lakh make one crore?
One hundred. A crore is defined as 10,000,000 (10⁷), exactly one hundred times a lakh (10⁵) and exactly ten times a million (10⁶). Indian financial reporting typically stops naming units at crore — larger figures are usually still written in crore rather than switching to a new word, the way English keeps using million into the billions with just more digits before the word.
Why does India group digits differently from the rest of the world?
The international system groups every three digits with a comma — thousand, million, billion — while the Indian system groups the first three digits together and then every two digits after that, producing lakh (10⁵) and crore (10⁷) as named steps in between. Both are simply different ways of naming the same underlying place-value number; 1,000,000 and 10,00,000 describe the identical quantity.
Where does the word lakh come from?
From the Sanskrit lakṣa, a Gupta-era term recorded with the meaning 'mark' or 'target' before it settled into use as the numeral for 100,000. The word passed into Hindi as lākh and from there into Indian English, where it now functions as an ordinary counting word in news reports, salary discussions and real-estate listings across South Asia.
Does the Reserve Bank of India use lakh and crore in its own reports?
Yes. RBI's published statistics, including its annual report tables on currency in circulation, state banknote volumes in lakh of pieces and their total value in crore of rupees, and the Government of India's own budget documents are presented in the same units. Converting a million-denominated figure into lakh is often the first step toward making an international number legible against Indian official statistics.
Is a lakh a unit of currency?
No — lakh is a number word, not a currency. It means 100,000 of whatever is being counted, whether that is rupees, dollars, people or grains of rice. This converter treats Millions and Lakhs purely as counting scales, the same way it would convert 5 million widgets into 50 lakh widgets, with no currency conversion involved at all.