Indian American DNA Ancestry: Save Your Data, Then Find Your Indian Roots

You did the test. Maybe a cousin gave it to you one Thanksgiving, maybe it was a holiday sale. The result came back as "Broadly South Asian", or one big block of "Northern Indian & Pakistani" that could describe most of a subcontinent. Your parents, who can name the town their grandparents left, were not impressed.

That result is not wrong, exactly. It is coarse. And if your family used 23andMe, there is a second, more urgent question: the company went bankrupt in 2025 and was sold, so what happens to the DNA you gave it?

This guide covers both. Why US-built tests often blur Indian ancestry. What changed at 23andMe, and what to do with your data now. How to download your raw file from 23andMe, AncestryDNA and MyHeritage. What that file can show when it is compared with references built around South Asia. And two family conversations: talking about roots with US-born kids, and testing the parents or grandparents who still live in India.

Indian America is many Indias

According to the Pew Research Center's analysis of the 2021-23 American Community Survey, about 4.86 million people in the US identified as Indian in 2023, alone or in combination with another group. About two in three (3.21 million) were immigrants and 1.65 million were born in the US. Indian Americans are the second-largest Asian origin group, roughly 21% of Asian Americans, and their number grew by 174% between 2000 and 2023. The Census Bureau's own 2023 estimate is a little higher, at 5.2 million.

California has the most Indian Americans (about 960,000), followed by Texas (570,000), New Jersey (440,000), New York (390,000) and Illinois (270,000). The New York metro area alone is home to about 710,000, and the Dallas and San Francisco areas to roughly 270,000 and 260,000.

What the Census says about home languages

The Census does not ask which Indian state your family comes from. The closest public signal is the language people speak at home, which the American Community Survey does record (table B16001). These are 2024 one-year estimates for people aged 5 and over:

Language spoken at home	US speakers (ACS 2024, age 5+)	Main home region in South Asia
Hindi	about 1.06 million	North and central India
Telugu	about 606,000	Andhra Pradesh and Telangana
Bengali	about 494,000	West Bengal and Bangladesh
Gujarati	about 492,000	Gujarat
Punjabi	about 382,000	Punjab, in India and Pakistan
Tamil	about 360,000	Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka
Malayalam, Kannada or other Dravidian (grouped)	about 325,000	Kerala and Karnataka
Nepali, Marathi or other Indic (grouped)	about 508,000	Maharashtra, Nepal and elsewhere

Read the table with two caveats. It counts speakers of any national origin, so Bengali and Punjabi include many Bangladeshi and Pakistani Americans. And it misses US-born children who speak only English at home, who are often the very people asking "so where are we actually from?"

The point stands anyway. A Telugu family from Guntur, a Patel family from Charotar, a Jat Sikh family from Doaba and a Malayali Christian family from Kottayam have very different histories. On many consumer reports, several of them can still end up under the same broad label.

Why US-built tests blur South Asian ancestry

Every ancestry estimate works the same way. Your DNA is compared with a reference panel: people whose families have lived in a known place for generations. The answer can only be as specific as the panel is for your part of the world, and as fine as the labels the company chooses to report.

India is genetically very structured

A landmark 2009 paper in Nature by David Reich and colleagues opened with a blunt line: India had been underrepresented in genome-wide surveys of human variation. Studying 25 Indian groups, they found that most Indians descend from a mixture of two ancient populations: Ancestral North Indians (ANI), related to Middle Easterners, Central Asians and Europeans, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), who are not closely related to groups outside the subcontinent. ANI ancestry ranged from 39% to 71% in most groups. Crucially for ancestry testing, they found that allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, because endogamy has preserved strong founder effects for thousands of years.

A 2013 follow-up by Priya Moorjani and colleagues in the American Journal of Human Genetics, using 73 groups, dated the ANI and ASI mixing to roughly 1,900 to 4,200 years ago, after which marriage within groups became the norm. And a 2017 study in Nature Genetics by Nathan Nakatsuka and colleagues, covering more than 2,800 people from over 260 South Asian groups, identified 81 groups descended from founder events more extreme than those in Ashkenazi Jews and Finns.

In plain terms: India is not one population but hundreds of related, distinct ones. A panel that sorts South Asia into a few large boxes will blur exactly the differences your family cares about. Our ANI and ASI explainer goes deeper.

What 23andMe compares you with

23andMe's Ancestry Composition guide says its reference data comes from 21,717 people across 78 populations, mostly consented 23andMe research participants plus public datasets such as the Human Genome Diversity Project and the 1000 Genomes Project. For South Asia, the populations it reports are Northern Indian & Pakistani, Bengali & Northeast Indian, Gujarati Patidar and Southern Indian & Sri Lankan, plus a Southern Indian subgroup and a Malayali subgroup, with a broad Central & South Asian category when the algorithm cannot decide. Its own validation table reports a precision of 87% for Northern Indian & Pakistani and 85% for Southern Indian & Sri Lankan, and the guide notes that some genetic ancestries are inherently difficult to distinguish.

The public datasets show part of the reason. The 1000 Genomes Project, one of the most widely used references in human genetics, includes five South Asian populations of about 100 people each: Bengali in Bangladesh, Gujarati Indians in Houston, Indian Telugu in the UK, Punjabi in Lahore and Sri Lankan Tamil in the UK. It is a valuable resource, but five groups cannot stand in for a subcontinent. For the full story, read why 23andMe says "Broadly South Asian".

AncestryDNA just became much more detailed for India

Credit where it is due. AncestryDNA's Ancestral Regions 2026 white paper, dated October 8, 2026, describes a reference panel of more than 295,000 samples representing 302 regions, up from 185,000 samples and 146 regions. The new list includes many South Asian regions, among them Uttar Pradesh & Bihar, Bengal, Gujarat, Goa, Maharashtra, Coastal Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka and Eastern Punjab. If you tested with AncestryDNA, log in and look at your updated results before you do anything else.

Regions are still not communities, though. The white paper explains that most panels are built from networks of AncestryDNA's own customers, with public datasets filling regions where it has limited data, so the detail you get still depends on who has tested. A second, India-focused reading of the same file, with community reference groups, ANI/ASI composition and haplogroups, is a useful companion and costs far less than a new kit.

23andMe after the bankruptcy: what happened to your data

If your family tested with 23andMe, the past few years have been a lot to follow. Here is the sequence, from company filings and news reporting.

• October 2023: 23andMe confirmed that attackers had used credential stuffing (passwords reused from other sites) to get into accounts and scrape profile data through the DNA Relatives feature. The company said 6.9 million people were exposed. In June 2025 the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined it £2.31 million.
• March 2025: 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
• May 2025: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals agreed to buy the company for $256 million in the court-supervised sale.
• June 2025: At a House Oversight Committee hearing, interim CEO Joseph Selsavage said about 1.9 million people, roughly 15% of customers, had asked for their genetic data to be deleted since the bankruptcy. Twenty-seven states and Washington, DC, sued to block the sale of genetic data without consent.
• June 2025: TTAM Research Institute, a California nonprofit founded and led by co-founder Anne Wojcicki, outbid Regeneron with $305 million for substantially all of the assets. A US bankruptcy judge approved the sale on June 27, while California, Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas and Utah remained opposed.
• July 14, 2025: TTAM announced it had completed the acquisition. 23andMe continues to operate, and its website and help pages now sit on 23andme.org addresses.

What TTAM promised

In the agreement summarised in 23andMe's June 2025 SEC filing, TTAM committed to follow 23andMe's existing privacy policies and consents, to keep honouring requests to delete accounts and genetic data and to opt out of research, to email customers before closing explaining how to do both, to set up a Consumer Privacy Advisory Board, and to offer two years of free Experian identity theft monitoring. It also said it would not sell or transfer genetic data in a future bankruptcy or change of control unless the buyer adopts the same privacy policies. We cover the details in 23andMe is now TTAM: what happened to your data.

The US privacy picture, stated plainly

The 23andMe story showed something many families had not considered: in the US, genetic data held by a company can be sold as part of a bankruptcy, with protection coming from the company's own policies, the court and state attorneys general. The federal Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA) of 2008 stops employers and health insurers from asking about or using your genetic information, but the National Human Genome Research Institute notes that it does not apply to other kinds of insurance, such as life or long-term care coverage.

None of that is a reason to panic. It is a reason to know where copies of your DNA live and who controls them.

What to do now: a five-step checklist

1. Download your raw data first. It is a plain text file of your genotypes, and it is the one thing that lets you re-analyse your DNA elsewhere without spitting in another tube.
2. Download your parents' files too, if you manage their profiles. Older relatives are often the most valuable tests in a family and the hardest to repeat.
3. Store it safely. Keep the original .zip on an encrypted drive or in a secure cloud folder, not in an email thread or a family WhatsApp group.
4. Review your settings. Check research consent and DNA Relatives sharing, change your password and turn on two-step verification.
5. Then decide about deletion. If you want 23andMe to delete your data, do it after you have the file, because deleting your account removes your access to it.

How to download your raw DNA data, company by company

Menus change, so treat these steps as a guide and check the company's help pages if a label looks different. A laptop or desktop works best; some downloads do not work on phones.

Company	Where to find it	What you get	Watch out for
23andMe	Profile menu > Settings > 23andMe Data > View, or Resources > Browse Raw Genotyping Data > Download	A .zip containing a .txt file	You confirm the profile's date of birth; the emailed file can take about a week in the US
AncestryDNA	DNA > Settings for your test > Download or Delete section > Download DNA data	A .zip containing a .txt file	You verify with your password or an emailed code, then click the link in the email
MyHeritage	DNA > Manage DNA kits > three-dot menu next to the kit > Download	A .zip containing a .csv file	Only the kit manager can download, only for kits MyHeritage processed, and not on an iPhone or iPad
FamilyTreeDNA, LivingDNA	The raw data download area of your account	A .txt, .csv or .zip file	Download the main autosomal raw data file, not a Y-DNA or mtDNA-only file

23andMe, step by step

1. Sign in to your 23andMe account on the web.
2. Open the profile menu, choose Settings and scroll to the 23andMe Data section. Click View.
3. Confirm the date of birth for the profile, tick the box and choose Submit request.
4. When the email saying your raw data download is ready arrives, follow the link, confirm the birth date again and download the .zip.

Guides also describe a faster route: Resources, then Browse Raw Genotyping Data, then Download. If neither matches your screen, search 23andMe's support site for "Accessing Your Raw Genetic Data".

AncestryDNA, step by step

1. Sign in, open the DNA tab and go to Settings for your test.
2. Scroll to the Download or Delete section and choose Download DNA data.
3. Confirm, then verify your identity with your password or a code sent by email.
4. Open the confirmation email from Ancestry and click the download link.

Your raw file is your genotype data, not your ethnicity estimate, so you do not need to download it again because the estimate was updated. More detail is in our guide to uploading AncestryDNA data for better Indian results.

MyHeritage, step by step

1. Sign in on the MyHeritage website from a computer or Android device.
2. Open DNA, then Manage DNA kits.
3. Click the three-dot menu next to the kit, choose Download and accept the terms.
4. Open the email from MyHeritage, follow the link, enter your password and download the file. The link expires, so do this promptly.

If you transferred data into MyHeritage from another company, download it from the original company instead. See our MyHeritage guide for more.

Three rules for the file

• Keep the original. Do not open and re-save it in Excel or a text editor; upload the .zip or .txt exactly as downloaded.
• Label it. Rename it with the person's name and the company, so Dad's file never gets mixed up with yours.
• One file per person. Each report describes the DNA in one file, so test results for siblings and parents stay separate.

What a Helixline upload shows for Indian Americans

You do not need a new kit. Your existing raw file from 23andMe (v3, v4 or v5), AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or LivingDNA is re-analysed against a reference panel built around South Asia: 7,600+ global reference samples, including 140+ South Asian community reference groups. The Upload Ancestry report includes:

• A state-level ancestry breakdown, so a Telugu family can see how its profile relates to Andhra Pradesh and Telangana rather than a single "Southern Indian" block.
• Community similarity comparisons with a closest-match shortlist. Reference groups in the panel include, for example, Patel/Patidar, Lohana and Dawoodi Bohra from Gujarat; Jat Sikh, Khatri Sikh and Punjabi Arora from Punjab; Kamma, Reddy and Telugu Brahmin from the Telugu states; Tamil Brahmin (Iyer), Chettiar and Nadar from Tamil Nadu; Nair, Ezhava/Thiyya and Syrian Christian from Kerala; and Bengali Brahmin, Bengali Kayasth and Bengali Muslim from Bengal.
• ANI and ASI composition and chromosome painting across 22 autosomes.
• Ancient DNA similarity to Indus Valley, Steppe and AASI references, offered as probabilistic historical context only.
• Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroups, if your raw file includes those markers.

Upload Complete adds 30+ wellness traits, carrier screening for conditions common in South Asian populations, pharmacogenomics insights and downloadable PDF reports. These are informational and wellness insights, not a diagnosis.

Plan	Price in USD (one-time)	Other currencies	What you get
Upload Ancestry	$25	£19 · €23 · CA$34 · A$38 · AED 92 · S$34 · ₹1,999	State-level breakdown, community comparisons, ANI/ASI, haplogroups. Results within 1-2 days.
Upload Complete	$50	£39 · €46 · CA$68 · A$76 · AED 184 · S$68 · ₹3,999	Everything above plus wellness traits, carrier screening, pharmacogenomics and PDF reports. Expert review can add a day or two.

How it works

1. Choose your plan and pay on helixline.in/upload (card through Razorpay in 8 currencies, or PayPal in USD).
2. We email you a link to your dashboard.
3. Sign in with the same email and upload your unmodified .txt or .zip raw data file. It takes about 2 minutes.
4. Your results are typically ready within 1-2 days.

Where your data lives

Your file is encrypted and stored in India under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023, it is never sold, and you can delete your uploaded raw file from your dashboard at any time. For a US customer, that means your data is held outside the US, by an Indian company, under Indian law. If your file cannot be processed, or you change your mind before analysis starts, you get a full refund (see the upload terms).

Talking about roots with US-born kids

For many second-generation families, the DNA question is really a family question: what do we tell the kids, and how? A few approaches work well.

Start with stories, then open the report

Children remember a grandmother's town, a train journey or a festival recipe long before they remember a percentage. Record the stories first: which district, which language, which temple, gurdwara, church or mosque, which relatives moved where and when. Then open the report together and look for the places in those stories. When the DNA and the family memory agree, it lands. When they differ, that is a good conversation too.

Use ANI and ASI to show that everyone is mixed

The ANI and ASI research is a gift for parents. Most Indian groups descend from a mixture of two ancient populations that mixed roughly 1,900 to 4,200 years ago, and the ANI side is itself related to populations across West Eurasia. There is no "pure" Indian, Gujarati or Tamil genome, which is a useful thing for a child growing up between two cultures to hear.

Let haplogroups make lineage concrete

Y-DNA passes from father to son almost unchanged, and mitochondrial DNA passes from a mother to all her children. A haplogroup is a branch on one of those lines, often tens of thousands of years deep. It is a single line among thousands of ancestors, but it gives a child something concrete to look up and map. Our guide to paternal and maternal lineages explains what each line can and cannot tell you.

Be ready for the caste question

Kids hear things at school, from relatives and in forwarded messages. If a report shows close similarity to a particular community, explain what that means: groups in India married within themselves for a long time, so they developed distinct genetic signatures, and you are being compared with them. DNA cannot identify or prove a caste, and genetics cannot rank anyone. Our article on what genetics shows about caste and endogamy is a careful starting point for teenagers.

Test the right person

A child carries about half of each parent's DNA, so a parent's or grandparent's results usually say more about the family's past than a child's. Siblings share about half their DNA with each other, so two siblings can show slightly different community similarities, and that is normal. If you are choosing whom to test, start with the oldest generation you can.

Gift a DNA kit to parents or grandparents in India

For many Indian Americans, the person whose DNA holds the most of the family story lives in Pune, Vadodara, Vijayawada or Thrissur, not in New Jersey. You can order a Helixline kit from the US and have it delivered to them in India.

1. Go to the buy page and choose a kit.
2. At checkout, choose "Someone in India" and enter your parent's Indian address and mobile number.
3. Pay in rupees with any card, including international cards.
4. Tick "Sending this as a gift" for a free occasion wrap and a printed note card with your message. No invoice or price slip goes in the box.
5. They give a saliva sample, which takes about 5 minutes and needs no blood, and pickup from their door is free. Results are typically ready in 2 to 3 weeks from when we receive the sample at our lab.

• Origins (₹6,999): ancestry, with a state-level breakdown, community similarity, ANI/ASI/steppe/AASI composition, and Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroups.
• Decode (₹12,999): everything in Origins plus health, traits and pharmacogenomics reports, and a Health Coach consultation.
• Infinite (₹17,999): everything in Decode plus a 137-marker Full Body Blood Test and a doctor consultation.

If you want one gift that covers both roots and health, Decode adds health and a coach consult to the ancestry report. Kits ship within India as standard; if you live in the US, uploading your own file is the quicker route for you, and our international page explains the options. For more ideas, read gifts for parents in India from the USA or see how gifting works.

Sources and further reading

• Pew Research Center, Indians in the U.S. fact sheet (2021-23 American Community Survey)
• US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 2024 1-year, table B16001, Language Spoken at Home, via Census Reporter
• Reich D. et al., Reconstructing Indian population history, Nature, 2009
• Moorjani P. et al., Genetic evidence for recent population mixture in India, American Journal of Human Genetics, 2013
• Nakatsuka N. et al., The promise of discovering population-specific disease-associated genes in South Asia, Nature Genetics, 2017
• Ensembl, 1000 Genomes Project population list
• 23andMe, Ancestry Composition guide
• AncestryDNA, Ancestral Regions 2026 white paper (October 2026)
• 23andMe, announcement of the agreement with TTAM, SEC filing, June 2025
• TTAM Research Institute, completion of the acquisition, July 14, 2025
• Fortune / Associated Press, court approval of the 23andMe sale, July 2025
• TechCrunch, 23andMe says 15% of customers asked to delete their genetic data, June 2025
• Wikipedia, 23andMe data leak
• National Human Genome Research Institute, Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does 23andMe say "Broadly South Asian" for Indian Americans?

Because an ancestry estimate can only be as specific as its reference panel. 23andMe's guide lists 21,717 reference people across 78 populations, and South Asia is split into a handful of broad populations such as Northern Indian & Pakistani and Southern Indian & Sri Lankan. When the algorithm cannot choose confidently it falls back to a broad label. India is genetically very structured, with hundreds of endogamous groups, so broad categories blur the differences families care about.

Is 23andMe still operating after its 2025 bankruptcy?

Yes. 23andMe filed for Chapter 11 in March 2025, and in July 2025 TTAM Research Institute, a nonprofit founded and led by co-founder Anne Wojcicki, completed its purchase of the business for $305 million. 23andMe continues to offer DNA testing, and TTAM committed to honour existing privacy policies, including requests to delete data and to opt out of research.

Should I download my 23andMe raw data before deleting my account?

Yes. Deleting your account removes your access to your data, so download the raw data file first and store it somewhere safe, such as an encrypted drive. The file lets you re-analyse your DNA with other services without taking a new test. Once you have it, you can decide whether to keep or delete your 23andMe account.

Can I upload AncestryDNA or MyHeritage data to Helixline from the US?

Yes. Helixline accepts raw data files from 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and LivingDNA. You pay at helixline.in/upload, sign in to your dashboard with the same email and upload the unmodified .txt or .zip file. You do not need a new kit, and results are typically ready within 1-2 days.

How much does a Helixline upload cost in US dollars?

Upload Ancestry is $25 and Upload Complete is $50, both one-time payments. Upload Ancestry gives a state-level breakdown, comparisons with 140+ South Asian community reference groups, ANI and ASI composition and haplogroups. Upload Complete adds wellness traits, carrier screening, pharmacogenomics and PDF reports. You can pay by card through Razorpay or by PayPal in USD.

Can DNA tell my family's caste or exact village?

No. DNA cannot identify or prove a caste, and it cannot name a village. Results are similarity comparisons to reference groups, not membership. A report can show which communities and states your DNA most resembles, which often fits family history well, but stories, documents and relatives are what connect you to a specific place and people.

Can I gift a Helixline kit to my parents in India from the US?

Yes. On helixline.in/buy, choose "Someone in India" at checkout, enter your parent's Indian address and mobile number, and pay with any card, including international cards. Tick "Sending this as a gift" for a free occasion wrap and a printed note card. Kits ship within India as standard, collection is a saliva sample with free doorstep pickup, and results are typically ready in 2 to 3 weeks from when we receive the sample at our lab.

Ready to see what your own file shows? Upload your raw data to Helixline for $25, or gift a kit to your parents in India.