South Asian population by city

Methodology

One row per city. The figure is the number of residents of South Asian origin — Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepalese, Sri Lankan and Bhutanese — as reported by that country's own statistical agency. Because no two countries count ethnicity the same way, the exact definition is printed on every row rather than hidden behind a single national average.

• United States — Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates, table B02015, summing the eight South Asian detailed groups. Townships that the Census files as county subdivisions rather than places (Edison, Piscataway, Plainsboro and others) are included from that layer.
• Canada — Statistics Canada, 2021 Census, “South Asian” visible-minority group.
• UK — ONS, Census 2021, Asian/Asian British ethnic groups.
• Australia — ABS, Census 2021. Measured by country of birth, which undercounts Australian-born people of South Asian descent.
• New Zealand — Stats NZ, 2023 Census, Indian ethnic group.
• Singapore — Dept of Statistics, Census 2020, Indian resident population.
• South Africa — Stats SA, Census 2022, Indian/Asian population group.
• UAE — consular estimate. No UAE census reports population by nationality, so this is flagged as an estimate rather than a count.

What this dataset is not good at

It is deep in the United States and thin elsewhere: 321 of the 336 cities are American, because US city-level data is published openly and most other countries release far less granular detail. Treat cross-country comparisons with care — a US ACS estimate, a Canadian visible-minority count and an Australian birthplace count are not the same measurement. City boundaries also differ: some rows are municipalities, some are metropolitan areas, and the row note says which.

Reported at country level only

Excluded from the ranking above, because a national figure cannot be compared against a city one:

• Doha — 830,000. Indians in QATAR (country-level; Doha holds most). No Qatari census by nationality. (Embassy of India, Doha)

Known gaps

Cities we cover but deliberately leave blank. In each case a bigger number was available and would have been misleading — a consular region spanning four states, or a national total — so we publish the gap instead of the wrong figure.

• Abu Dhabi, UAE — No emirate-level census by nationality. UAE-wide Indian population ~4.3m (2024); Dubai holds over half.
• Frankfurt, Germany — No city-level figure. CGI Frankfurt reports ~67,000 across its 4-state jurisdiction (Hesse/RLP/Saarland/NRW) — a consular region, NOT the city. Berlin leads German cities at ~17,000, so Frankfurt city is below that.
• Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — No city-level Indian figure published by DOSM. Malaysia total 2.0m Indians (6.7%), 2020 census.
• Munich, Germany — No city-level figure. Bavaria (state) has 36,000+ Indian residents, largely Munich-driven.
• The Hague, Netherlands — No city-level figure. CBS counts Surinamese origin, not South Asian — Hindustani-Surinamese are not separately enumerated.
• Utrecht, Netherlands — No city-level figure. CBS counts Surinamese origin, not South Asian — Hindustani-Surinamese are not separately enumerated.

Licence & corrections

Published under CC BY 4.0 — use it anywhere, including commercially, with attribution to Desi.Net. Underlying census figures remain the property of the agencies named. Spotted an error or have a better source for a city? Tell us and we will correct it and credit you.