Wikipedia: South Asian numbering system

In India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, they don’t group numbers by three decimals like we do, but by two. That is, while we have thousand (1,000), million (1,000,000), billion (1,000,000,000), etc., they have lakh (1,00,000), crore (1,00,00,000), etc. Sometimes there are two decimals between each comma, sometimes three. Somebody with 10 million rupees would have 1 crore rupees, or 1,00,00,000 rupees. I had assumed that three decimals was universal, and that language followed accordingly, but in retrospect there’s no reason why that should be so. →