Tola, ratti and grams: reading the weight your family used

One tola equals 11.664 grams. That is the number to hold onto if your mother or nani always spoke of gold in tola, not grams. A ratti, the smaller unit sometimes used for stones and small gold pieces, is about 0.1215 grams, and 96 ratti make one tola. A shop in Noida Extension or anywhere in Delhi NCR weighs your gold in grams because that is what the digital scale and the karatmeter both read in, and grams give a finer, more exact number than tola ever could.

If you grew up hearing "das tola sona" or "paanch tola ka set" at home, this gap between the old unit and the new one is completely normal. It is not a trick, and it does not change what your gold is worth. It is just two different rulers measuring the same thing.

What is a tola, exactly?

Tola is a traditional South Asian unit of mass, used for gold, silver and grain long before India adopted the metric system. It is still the unit most families use when they talk about jewellery, especially across a generation gap — grandparents say tola, grandchildren say grams.

The fixed conversion is:

• 1 tola = 11.664 grams
• 10 tola = 116.64 grams
• 1 gram = 0.0858 tola

This is not an approximation someone rounded off. It is the legal, standardised value used across the Indian gold trade, so any shop or jeweller working in tola is working off the same number.

What about ratti?

Ratti is older still, and smaller — historically based on the weight of a gunja seed. It shows up more with stones than with gold today, but some families still describe small gold items, like a ring or a nose pin, in ratti.

• 1 ratti ≈ 0.1215 grams
• 96 ratti = 1 tola

You will rarely need to do ratti math yourself. It is worth knowing mainly so that if an elder in the family says a piece is "do ratti ka", you understand roughly what that means in grams — a fraction of a gram, not a meaningful chunk of weight.

Why does the shop weigh in grams, not tola?

Two reasons, both practical rather than official.

The scale is calibrated in grams. Digital jewellery scales read in grams and milligrams because that resolution is fine enough to catch small differences that tola cannot show. A tola-based scale would round off exactly the kind of precision a customer should want when their gold is being weighed.

The rate is quoted in grams too. Gold rates in the news, on rate pages and at the counter are published per gram or per 10 grams, so weighing in grams keeps the unit consistent from the scale straight through to the final number worked out at the counter, with no conversion step in between where an error could creep in.

None of this changes what happens to your gold. You can still ask, in tola, how much your piece weighs, and get an answer you can check against the scale yourself. See how a karatmeter reading is taken for how the purity side of the same reading works.

How do I convert my jewellery's tola weight myself?

If an old bill, a family ledger, or just memory tells you a piece is, say, two tola, multiply by 11.664 to get the weight in grams. Two tola is 23.328 grams. Five tola is 58.32 grams. Keep the exact figure rather than a rounded one — at the gram level, the difference matters more than it looks.

Bring that number with you, but do not treat it as final. Old jewellery loses tiny amounts of weight over decades from wear, cleaning and past repairs, and enamel, stones or meenakari work sit on the piece without being gold themselves. The scale at the counter, weighed in front of you, is what decides the actual weight — your own conversion is just a useful check.

If Hindi is easier for this conversation than English, see this page in that register — the terms and the process are the same either way, whether you call it purana sona or old gold.

Questions people ask

How many grams is 1 tola of gold? One tola equals 11.664 grams. This is the standard conversion used across the Indian gold trade, not a rounded estimate.

Why do gold shops use grams instead of tola? Digital scales and karatmeters are calibrated in grams because that gives a finer reading than tola allows, and gold rates are quoted per gram too, so the whole process stays in one unit. If you want to see that scale and reading for yourself, call or WhatsApp 9217742656 and ask before you come in.

How much is a ratti in grams? One ratti is about 0.1215 grams, and 96 ratti make one tola. It is an older, smaller unit mostly seen today in descriptions of small gold pieces or stones.

How the karatmeter reading is taken · How your gold is weighed, and what a tola actually is · Selling gold near Noida Extension