Before You Hit Send, Check Your Numbers
Your client might run different numberware
If your email, spreadsheet, or proposal contains any of the following — 1,00,000 / 10,00,000 / 1,00,00,000—stop. Reformat before it reaches a Western inbox.
This is Lakh notation. It is standard across India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. It is completely invisible to anyone who grew up outside that system. To a European or American reader, it looks like a formatting error, a conversion glitch, or—unfairly but honestly—a sign that the sender does not know what they are doing.
One lakh = 100,000. One crore = 10,000,000. Write it that way in any international communication. Every time.
Countries where Lakh/Crore notation is standard: India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, and parts of the Middle East with large South Asian business communities.
Your number notation is one of four things worth checking in every piece of written business communication before you click send from your desk in Pune, Gurugram, or Bangalore. Tag this on your wall. It will cost you thirty seconds per email and save you something that is much harder to recover—your first impression.
The first time I encountered Lakh notation, my first instinct was that a colleague in Colombo was having a very bad day with Excel. The full story—and what it reveals about the invisibility of cultural defaults—is in the next layer: The Spreadsheet That Made Me Question.
