Asian-Indian Business in the U.S. Had Over $150 Billion in Receipts in 2007

In the “informal” U.S. Census of 2007 (a formal census is done every 10 years) Indian-Americans owned nearly a fifth, or 19.9 percent of Asian-owned firms.

Asian-owned firms generated more than $507 billion or over half a trillion dollars of revenue in 2007, as the chart shows. Of that, Indian, Chinese and Korean-owned firms did the lion’s share of that business – almost $375 billion, or nearly three-quarters of total revenues.

The receipts of these 308,514 firms owned by Indian-Americans came to $152.5 billion, amounting to 30 percent of the total for Asian-American businesses. Though Chinese-Americans owned more firms – 423,609 in number – their share of the Asian-American receipts came to $142.8 billion.

While some firms did over a billion dollars in sales, for the average Indian-owned firm, their 2007 revenues were close to half a million dollars: about $494,300.

Almost half or 48.9 percent of Indian-owned businesses were in professional, scientific and technical services, including retail, healthcare social assistance areas. In comparison, 40 percent of Chinese-Americans owned businesses in these sectors.

In 2007, Indian-Americans owned 1.7 percent of all U.S. businesses in these sectors.

In the five-year period between 2002 and 2007, there was a 32.5 percent rise in the number of Indian-owned businesses in the U.S. But Filipino business owners had a higher increase in businesses during that period.

The data reveal that California had the highest concentration of Indian-owned businesses nationwide, with over 19 percent of the nation’s share. New York was second in the share of Indian-owned businesses with 15.5 percent, while Texas placed third with 9 percent.

California alone had 58,995 of the 308,514 Indian-owned firms in the U.S. County-wise, Los Angeles had the most with 16,730 Indian companies, and Queens in the state of New York followed closely with 16,324 Indian firms.

In terms of metropolitan regions, the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island area led in the number of Indian businesses with a whopping 64,457 of them. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area was second with 23,151 Indian-owned companies, and third was the Chicago-Naperville-Joliet region, which had 17,362 Indian businesses.