Of the many challenges facing foreign businesspeople in India, one of the most surprising is the numbering system. You think you know how to count? Think again. The national and state governments, as well as many local businesses and media outlets, use the Vedic system, which shares our familiar Arabic system for numbers under 99,999, but then diverges.
Local newspaper reports of business deals or government contracts tend to be liberally interspersed with references to lakh and crore. If you don’t understand those terms, it could cost you a fortune.
What we refer to as 100,000 is one lakh in India, transcribed as 1,00,000. Our 1 million equates to 10 lakh, written as 10,00,000. And 10 million is one crore, or 1,00,00,000. One billion equals 100 crore, or 1,00,00,00,000.
When Slumdog Millionaire was released in 2008, it glossed over India’s numbering system. In truth, India’s version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, which is so central to the movie, uses the local system. When the film was released in India, the title was necessarily changed. Indians know it as Slumdog Crorepati.
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