lakhs

A lakh, also spelled lac, is a unit in the Indian numbering system equal to 100,000 (one hundred thousand). It is widely used in India and other parts of South Asia, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, to express large numbers. The term is derived from Persian and Sanskrit roots meaning hundred thousand.

In the Indian system, larger numbers are built from multiples of lakh and crore. For example, ten lakh equals one million, and one hundred lakh equals ten million, while one crore equals ten million. In everyday language, people say “five lakh rupees” or “two lakh people.” A budget of fifty crore rupees translates to five hundred million rupees.

Lakh is commonly used in currency, population figures, and financial contexts within the regions that use the Indian numbering system. For formal or global communication, numbers are often rendered using Western terms such as thousand, million, and billion, or written with standard scientific notation. While the lakh remains familiar in domestic usage, its use decreases in international or technical writing that adopts the Western numbering system.