Global Indian Diaspora in Numbers: 37M People, $135B a Year Home

In the third week of June 2026, branch managers at small private banks in Thrissur and Kottayam started taking calls they had not taken in years. The Reserve Bank had just lifted the interest-rate ceiling on fresh long-term NRI deposits and agreed to absorb the hedging cost of dollar deposits for banks. Within four months, money that had sat in savings accounts in Houston, Sharjah and Leicester was moving home in volumes not seen since the 2013 rupee scare. That episode tells you more about the Indian diaspora than any population headcount: it is a demographic, yes, but it is also one of the largest and most rate-sensitive pools of foreign capital India can call on.

This piece puts numbers on that pool. How many people are we talking about, where do they live, what do they earn, how much do they send, and how much do they park? The answers depend heavily on which official count you trust, and the gaps between the counts are part of the story.

Two ways to count, two very different totals

There are two headline numbers for the Indian diaspora and they measure different things. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs counts people born in India who now live in another country. On that basis, more than 18.5 million Indian-born people lived abroad in 2024, about 6% of all international migrants and the largest national group in the world. In 1990 the figure was roughly 6.5 million. The UN series, published through its International Migrant Stock database, is the one demographers compare across countries.

India's Ministry of External Affairs uses a much wider net. Its population of overseas Indians table, updated to January 2026, counts 17.76 million Non-Resident Indians (Indian citizens living abroad) and 19.52 million Persons of Indian Origin (foreign citizens with Indian ancestry), for a total of 37.28 million. The PIO count reaches back several generations: the 2.75 million people of Indian origin in Malaysia, the 1.72 million in South Africa and the 865,000 in Mauritius are mostly descendants of indentured and trading migrants from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Neither number is wrong. They answer different questions. If you care about labour migration and remittances, the UN migrant stock and the MEA's NRI line are the relevant ones. If you care about cultural reach, philanthropy or political lobbying, the broader 37 million is closer to reality. Analysts who quote "35 million NRIs" are mixing the two.

Where they live: the top host countries

The MEA's country table shows a diaspora split along a clear line. In the Gulf, almost everyone is an Indian citizen on a work visa, because Gulf states rarely grant citizenship. In North America, Europe and Australia, a large share has naturalised and shows up as PIO. Southeast Asia, Africa and the Indian Ocean are dominated by old settler communities with very few current passport holders.

Country	NRIs (citizens)	PIOs	Total overseas Indians
United States	2,311,484	3,767,737	6,079,221
UAE	4,326,248	17,760	4,344,008
Canada	1,388,300	1,859,680	3,247,980
Malaysia	152,370	2,750,000	2,902,370
Saudi Arabia	2,747,551	3,000	2,750,551
United Kingdom	369,000	913,836	1,282,836
Kuwait	1,036,389	2,356	1,038,745
Qatar	830,491	n/a	830,491

Source: Ministry of External Affairs, population of overseas Indians, data as of January 2026. Country estimates are compiled by Indian missions and vary in method.

Two things stand out. First, the UAE alone holds about a quarter of all NRIs worldwide, more than the United States and Canada combined. Second, the six Gulf Cooperation Council states together account for close to half of Indian citizens abroad, which matches the UN finding that nearly half of Indian emigrants live in GCC countries. Canada's figure is the one to watch: 1.39 million NRIs reflects the student and work-permit surge of 2019-2023, and some of that cohort is now leaving or transitioning status as Ottawa tightens caps.

Two diasporas with very different pay slips

It is tempting to talk about "the diaspora" as one group. Economically it is at least two. The Gulf diaspora is overwhelmingly working-age, often male, on fixed-term contracts in construction, logistics, retail, health and hospitality, with families left behind in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Its members cannot settle permanently, so almost every surplus dirham is eventually headed home.

The Western diaspora looks nothing like that. Pew Research's fact sheet on Indian Americans puts the median household income of Indian-headed households at $151,200 in 2023, the highest of any Asian American origin group and well above the US median. About 77% of Indian Americans aged 25 and older hold at least a bachelor's degree, two-thirds are foreign-born, and the poverty rate is 6%. These households send money home too, but they also buy property, invest in Indian equities, fund start-ups and, increasingly, pay for parents' healthcare directly.

The Gulf diaspora sends wages home because it has no choice. The Western diaspora sends capital home when the price is right.

That distinction matters for policy. Gulf remittances are steady and relatively insensitive to interest rates; they track oil prices, construction cycles and visa rules. Western flows are lumpier and respond to rate differentials, the rupee's direction and tax changes in the host country.

The money home: $135 billion and shifting sources

India received $135.46 billion in personal remittances in 2024-25, according to RBI balance-of-payments data, making it the world's largest recipient by a wide margin. The World Bank, which uses calendar years, had estimated $129 billion for 2024, out of roughly $685 billion flowing to all low- and middle-income countries. Put differently, close to one in every five remittance dollars sent to the developing world goes to India.

The more interesting shift is in where the money starts. The RBI's sixth remittance survey, covering 2023-24, found that advanced economies overtook the Gulf as the main source for the first time. The United States accounted for 27.7% of inflows, up from 23.4% in 2020-21. The UAE was second at 19.2%, and the UK rose sharply to 10.8% from 6.8%. The US, UK, Singapore, Canada and Australia together supplied more than half.

On the receiving side, Maharashtra's share fell to 20.5% from 35.2%, while Kerala nearly doubled to 19.7%. Tamil Nadu took 10.4%, Telangana 8.1% and Karnataka 7.7%. Maharashtra's drop partly reflects how banks book transfers (Mumbai has long been the clearing point for money ultimately destined elsewhere), and Kerala's rebound reflects better attribution as much as fresh migration. Transfers above Rs 5 lakh made up about 29% of value, a sign that a meaningful slice of "remittances" is really savings and investment, not grocery money.

Worked example: what each diaspora sends per head

Combining the RBI survey with the MEA population table gives a rough sense of intensity. The numbers are imperfect because the survey covers 2023-24 and the population count is January 2026, but the orders of magnitude are useful.

• United States: 27.7% of $118.7 billion (total 2023-24 inflows) is about $32.9 billion. Divided by 6.08 million overseas Indians, that is roughly $5,400 per person. Divided only by the 2.31 million NRIs, it jumps to about $14,200.
• UAE: 19.2% of $118.7 billion is about $22.8 billion. Divided by 4.34 million overseas Indians (almost all NRIs), that is roughly $5,250 per person.
• United Kingdom: 10.8% of $118.7 billion is about $12.8 billion. Divided by 1.28 million overseas Indians, that is roughly $10,000 per person, and about $34,700 per NRI.

The UAE figure is believable as household behaviour: a worker on a mid-level salary sending home a few hundred dollars a month. The UK figure is not, at least not as wages. It almost certainly captures transfers booked through London-based institutions, larger investment-style transfers and money sent by British citizens of Indian origin who do not appear as NRIs. The lesson is that per-head remittance comparisons across corridors say as much about plumbing as about people. For corridor-level detail, see our guides to US and Canada to India transfers and the Gulf to South Asia corridor.

The diaspora as a balance sheet

Remittances are a flow. NRI deposits are a stock, and a large one. Outstanding NRI deposits in Indian banks stood at $167.58 billion at end-February 2026, of which $33.72 billion was in FCNR(B) foreign-currency accounts. Fresh inflows had slowed to $11.04 billion over April 2025 to February 2026, down 24% from a year earlier, as the rate advantage on offer in India narrowed against US and Gulf deposit rates.

Then the RBI changed the arithmetic. On 8 June 2026 it opened an FCNR(B) swap window in which it bears the hedging cost for banks, and on 17 June it temporarily removed rate ceilings on fresh FCNR(B) deposits of three to five years and NRE deposits of three years and above, until 30 September 2026. Some smaller banks began quoting around 7% on dollar deposits. SBI Research estimated the window could pull in $40-45 billion through FCNR(B) alone. Early data suggested the response was real: NRI deposit inflows rose nearly seven-fold to $36.24 billion in April-July 2026.

This is the same playbook India used in 2013, and it works because the Western diaspora holds savings in dollars and responds to yield. It is also a reminder that these deposits carry costs: the RBI is effectively paying around 3-3.5% a year in hedging to attract them. If you are weighing the account types themselves, our explainer on NRE vs NRO vs FCNR accounts covers repatriation and tax treatment, and NRI investment routes covers what else that money can buy. Neither is advice; check with a qualified adviser before moving savings.

Frictions on the way home

The money still leaks on the way. The World Bank's global average cost of sending $200 was 6.36% in the third quarter of 2025, and while India-bound corridors are cheaper than the average, small transfers from the Gulf through cash-based agents still pay noticeably more than bank-to-bank transfers from the US. Our cost of sending money home tracker breaks this down by corridor.

Host-country policy is adding friction too. Since 1 January 2026, the United States has levied a 1% federal excise tax on remittances funded with cash, money orders or cashier's cheques, under section 4475 of the Internal Revenue Code. Transfers funded from a US bank account or a US-issued card are exempt. For the salaried Indian American sending from a checking account the tax is irrelevant; for lower-income workers who use cash at a counter it is a direct cost, and it nudges more of the corridor onto bank and card rails.

Gulf states, meanwhile, are steadily formalising wage payments through payroll cards and wage protection systems, which tends to pull remittances out of informal channels and into the official numbers. Part of the long-run rise in recorded Indian remittances is simply better measurement.

What to watch next

• 16 October 2026: last date for banks to access the RBI's FCNR(B) swap for deposits raised between 8 June and 30 September. The next monthly RBI deposit releases will show how much of the summer surge was new money versus recycled savings.
• December 2026: the World Bank's next Migration and Development Brief, with its calendar-2026 estimate for India and early evidence on whether the US excise tax shifted volumes.
• 7-9 January 2027: the 19th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Kolkata, organised by the MEA with the West Bengal government. Expect announcements on diaspora investment and possibly instruments in the spirit of diaspora bonds.
• 2026-27: Canadian and UK visa changes. A shrinking student and temporary-worker pipeline to Canada would show up first in NRI counts and only later in remittances.

Our view: the diaspora headcount will keep growing slowly, but its economic weight is shifting from wages to wealth. The Gulf will remain the backbone of household remittances for millions of families. The swing factor for India's external accounts, though, is now a few million well-paid professionals in North America and Europe deciding, month by month, whether a rupee deposit beats a money-market fund at home. Policymakers have noticed. The June 2026 measures were aimed squarely at them.

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