Lakhs to Yi / Oku (lakh to yi)

1 lakh equals 0.001 yi / oku exactly.

1 lakh = 0.001 yi / oku

How to convert lakhs to yi / oku

To convert lakhs to yi / oku, multiply the number of lakhs by 0.001. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply yi / oku by 1,000.

yi / oku = lakhs × 0.001

Example: 10 lakhs = 0.01 yi / oku.

Large-number names differ around the world: this site uses the short scale (billion = 10⁹) by default, and lists the long-scale billion separately.

About these units

Lakh (lakh)

Indian subcontinentCurrent unit

One hundred thousand (10⁵). The standard unit in the Indian numbering system, written 1,00,000.

Gambling stakes may have named the lakh. The Sanskrit word lakṣa originally meant a mark, a target or a stake in gambling, and in the Classical Sanskrit of the Gupta era it became the numeral for 100,000. English borrowed it from South Asia, and other languages did too: in Malay and Indonesian, laksa means 10,000 instead. The Indian numbering system gives a name to nearly every second power of ten, which is why a hundred thousand gets its own word rather than being called ten myriads or a hundred thousands.

A lakh is 100,000, written 1,00,000 under Indian digit grouping: the first three digits from the right form one group and every later group has two digits. It is the everyday system in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where it is preferred over the international one. Rupee amounts are stated in lakhs, so 150,000 rupees is 1.5 lakh. Indian English also uses lakhs of as a loose phrase for very many, and formal publications usually give foreign currencies in the international system and rupees in lakhs and crores.

1 lakh = 100,000 pieces (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Lakh; Wikipedia: Indian numbering system

Yi / Oku (East Asian) (yi)

ChineseTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

One hundred million (10⁸), written 億 / 亿 in Chinese and Japanese (oku) and Korean (eok). East Asian counting groups numbers by myriads.

Chinese counting does not group digits in threes. It groups them in fours, so 1,234,567,890 is read as 12 yi, 3456 wan, 7890. Wan is 10,000 and yi is 10,000 times wan, giving 100,000,000. In Japanese the same character is read oku and in Korean eok. The yi is therefore a pure number with no physical dimension, and its base here is simply one.

This myriad system differs from English, which builds on thousands. One million is 100 wan, and one billion in the short scale is 10 yi, since these languages have no native words for powers of one thousand. Ancient texts wrote 10,000 squared as wan wan before yi became the name. Older usage differed, and yi once stood for 10 to the 5th. The next unit, zhao, is 10 to the 12th in Taiwan, Japan and Korea, but mainland China has used it for a million, so official documents avoid it.

1 yi / oku (East Asian) = 100,000,000 pieces (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Chinese numerals; Wikipedia: Myriad

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