Margin is profit measured on the SELLING PRICE; markup is profit measured on COST. Confusing them under-prices your work — a 50% markup is only a 33.3% margin. Analyse an existing price, or set one from a target.
Both describe the same profit, against different bases. Markup divides profit by COST: buy at ₹100, sell at ₹150, markup is 50%. Margin divides the same ₹50 by the PRICE: 50/150 = 33.3%. Quoting a markup number when you mean margin under-prices the product.
It depends on the industry: groceries run on low single digits, services often 40-60%. The more useful discipline is knowing YOUR margin per product and watching it move — and pricing from a target margin rather than cost-plus guesswork.
Price = cost ÷ (1 − margin). For a 40% margin on a ₹600 cost: 600 ÷ 0.6 = ₹1,000. Note it is NOT cost × 1.4 — that is a markup, and gives ₹840, a 28.6% margin.
Because margin is measured on the selling price, 100% would mean the product cost you nothing. Markup has no such ceiling — a ₹10 item sold at ₹100 is a 900% markup but a 90% margin.
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