The Biz of Coding

Convert Lakh, Crore to Million and Billion

by Ujwal Tickoo on June 26th, 2008

If you regularly view financial reports of Tech players in India and US you would run into issues of Lakhs and Crores being used in India whilst Millions and Billions being used in US. At such times you need to do 2 conversions actually Dollar > Rupee and Lakh / Crore > Million > Billion

Here are some simple conversion tips to remember for such situations

• 1 Million = 10 Lakhs
• 1 Crore = 100 Lakhs
• 1000 Million = 1 Billion
• 1 Million Dollars = 400 Lakh Rupees = 4 Crore Rupees (@ a conversion rate of 1 US $ = 40 Rs)

I found this nifty web converter from Khitij consultancy where you can input a number and get its Lakh / Crore < > Million / Billion Equivalent. This utility also gives a cool converter for currency. This is a surefire way to get around.

No its not over yet. If you have the time to get more confused (or enlightened) go ahead and spend some time reading about short scale and long scale versions of numeric systems at Wikipedia.

The long and short scales are two different numerical systems used throughout the world:

Short scale…refers to a system of numeric names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000 times the previous term: "billion" means "a thousand millions" (10⁹), "trillion" means "a thousand billions" (10¹²)…

Long scale…refers to a system of numeric names in which every new term greater than million is 1,000,000 times the previous term: "billion" means "a million millions" (10¹²), "trillion" means "a million billions" (10¹⁸)…

…the difference between the two scales grows as numbers get larger. Million is the same in both scales, but the long-scale billion is a thousand times larger than the short-scale billion, the long-scale trillion is a million times larger than the short-scale trillion, and so on.

Have fun bothering your nerd friends — innocently asking "you mean revenue in long scale billion or short scale billion" ! ;)

POSTED IN: India