Indian Australian and Indian New Zealander DNA Ancestry: A Practical Guide

Ask an Indian family in Melbourne, Sydney, Perth or Auckland where they come from and you can get several answers at once. A state in India. A city where the grandparents settled after Partition. A sugar town in Fiji. A first job in Dubai or Singapore before the move south. For many families the story only goes back two or three generations on paper.

DNA can add a deeper layer. This guide is for Indian Australians and Indian New Zealanders, including Indo-Fijian families, who have taken a 23andMe or AncestryDNA test (or are thinking about one). It covers who the community is, using official census figures, what those global tests show South Asians in 2026, what peer-reviewed research says about Indian ancestry, and how to get a sharper Indian picture from the raw file you already own, paid in Australian dollars.

Who Indian Australians and Indian New Zealanders are, by the numbers

Before the genetics, it helps to know the community you belong to. Both countries publish detailed census data, and the picture they paint is of a large, young and fast-growing diaspora with roots in almost every part of India.

Australia: the 2021 Census

The Australian Bureau of Statistics counted 673,352 people born in India in the 2021 Census, 2.6% of the population. India moved from the fourth to the second largest overseas country of birth, and it was the country of birth that grew by the largest amount between 2016 and 2021, an increase of 217,963 people. Greater Melbourne alone was home to 242,635 India-born residents.

Among people born in India, the most common ancestries reported were Indian (69.7%), Punjabi (12.4%), Sikh (6.4%), English (5.2%) and Telugu (2.4%). People could give up to two ancestries, so these overlap. Counting second and later generations as well, the ABS reports that about 976,000 people gave an Indian-related ancestry, a grouping of 11 ancestries that includes Punjabi, Sikh, Gujarati and Telugu.

Language tells the same story. Punjabi was used at home by 239,033 people in 2021, up from 132,490 in 2016. That was the biggest increase of any language in Australia, 107,000 more speakers, and almost three quarters of Punjabi speakers were born in India. Hindi was used at home by 195,658 people. Among India-born Australians, Hinduism (51.0%) and Sikhism (22.1%) were the most common religions, followed by Catholic Christianity (10.6%).

New Zealand: the 2023 Census

Stats NZ's 2023 Census ethnic group summaries count 292,092 people of Indian ethnicity, out of a total population of 4,993,923, or about 5.8%. That is up from 239,193 in 2018. In 2023, 72.9% of Indian New Zealanders were born overseas: 50.6% in Asia and 18.4% in the Pacific Islands, while 27.1% were born in New Zealand. A quarter (25.2%) speak Hindi.

Indian New Zealand has deep roots too. Most early Indian migrants to New Zealand, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, were from Punjab and Gujarat, and those families have now been in the country for well over a century.

Measure	Figure	Source
People in Australia born in India	673,352 (2.6%)	ABS, 2021 Census
Australians with an Indian-related ancestry	About 976,000	ABS, 2021 Census
Punjabi used at home in Australia	239,033 (up from 132,490 in 2016)	ABS, 2021 Census
Top ancestries among India-born Australians	Indian 69.7%, Punjabi 12.4%, Sikh 6.4%, English 5.2%, Telugu 2.4%	ABS, 2021 Census
People in Australia born in Fiji	68,947 (Indian 46.4% and Fijian Indian 13.7% by ancestry)	ABS, 2021 Census
Indian ethnic group in New Zealand	292,092 (239,193 in 2018)	Stats NZ, 2023 Census
Fijian Indian ethnic group in New Zealand	23,808	Stats NZ, 2023 Census

Behind those numbers sit very different family histories. A Jat Sikh family from Doaba, a Telugu software engineer in Sydney, a Gujarati shopkeeping family that came via East Africa, a Malayali nurse in Perth and an Indo-Fijian family whose ancestors left Calcutta in 1885 are all "Indian" on a census form. Their DNA can look quite different, and that is exactly where a South Asia focused analysis helps. If your family is Punjabi, Telugu, Gujarati or Tamil, our community guides go deeper: Punjabi DNA ancestry, Telugu DNA ancestry, Gujarati DNA and ancestry and Tamil DNA ancestry.

Indo-Fijian families: migrants twice over

A large part of Indian Australia and Indian New Zealand did not come directly from India. They came from Fiji, and their ancestors reached Fiji under indenture.

The word "girmit" comes from "agreement", the indenture contract labourers signed, and a girmitiya is someone who travelled under it. The first ship, the Leonidas, reached Levuka from Calcutta on 14 May 1879 with 498 labourers. Between 1879 and 1916 about 60,000 people arrived; published totals differ slightly depending on how births at sea and later arrivals are counted. Many stayed after their contracts ended, and their descendants became a large part of Fiji's population. After the military coup of 1987, many Indo-Fijians left, settling mainly in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.

The census shows the result. Of the 68,947 Fiji-born people in Australia in 2021, the most common ancestries were Indian (46.4%), Fijian (34.8%) and Fijian Indian (13.7%), and the most common religions were Hinduism (44.9%) and Islam (11.8%). In New Zealand, 23,808 people recorded the specific Fijian Indian ethnicity in 2023, and many more Indo-Fijians are counted within the wider Indian group.

The northern stream: Calcutta

The larger stream came from the Hindi belt. About half of Indo-Fijians trace their origins to the Awadh and Bhojpuri speaking regions of present-day Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Fiji Hindi, still spoken in many Indo-Fijian homes in Sydney and Auckland, grew out of the dialects these migrants carried with them.

The southern stream: Madras, from 1903

Recruitment from South India began later. Between 1903 and 1916, 15,132 labourers sailed from Madras, about a quarter of all girmitiyas. They were recruited mainly in North Arcot, Madras, Krishna, Godavari, Visakhapatnam, Tanjore, Malabar and Coimbatore districts, and more than half came from North Arcot and Madras. In the 1903 emigration passes that recorded language, Telugu speakers outnumbered Tamil speakers, with Malayalam third.

So an Indo-Fijian family may have northern roots, southern roots or both, after more than a century of marriage between the two streams in Fiji. Emigration passes can record a district, thana and village. DNA cannot do that, but it can show which way your ancestry leans. Our full guide, Indo-Fijian DNA: tracing your girmitiya roots, explains how to find and read those passes.

What 23andMe and AncestryDNA show South Asians in 2026

Most Indian Australians who have tested used one of the two big American companies. Both have improved their South Asian results in recent years, and it is worth being precise about what each one shows today.

23andMe

23andMe's Ancestry Composition groups South Asian ancestry into a handful of populations. Its July 2024 update listed seven Central and South Asian populations: Central Asian, Bangladeshi and Northeast Indian, Central and Southern Indian, Gujarati Patel, "Kannadiga, Tamil, Telugu and Sri Lankan", Malayali, and North Indian and South Pakistani. When the algorithm can place a stretch of DNA in South Asia but not confidently in one of those populations, it reports it as "Broadly South Asian". For many Indian customers that broad share is large.

In January 2025 23andMe added 44 South Asian "genetic groups" for customers tested on its V5 chip, with names such as Punjab Plains, Kerala Plains, Kashmir, Bengal Basin, Tulu Nadu and Parsis in Western India. These groups describe connections through shared relatives in its database, which is useful, but they sit alongside the percentage estimate rather than replacing it. If your report is mostly "Broadly South Asian", read why 23andMe says "Broadly South Asian" and how to fix it.

AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA made a large change on October 8, 2026. Its Ancestral Regions 2026 white paper says the update more than doubled the number of regions it can assign, from 146 to 302. On the South Asian side the list now includes many named Indian regions: several Punjab regions (including Northern, Central, Eastern and Western Punjab), Kashmir and Punjab, Sindh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Gujarat and South Gujarat, Rajasthan and Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Coastal Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Bangladesh and Assam, Nepal and Sri Lanka, among others.

For Indian Australians who tested with AncestryDNA, this is a real step forward. A Punjabi family may now see a specific Punjab region rather than a single large block, and a Telugu or Tamil family may see a South Indian state named. Some of the new regions are tied to particular communities rather than geography, which is a reminder that these are statistical groupings built from reference samples, not borders on a map.

What neither report gives you

Even with these updates, the two global reports leave gaps that matter to Indian families:

• Community-level similarity. Neither reports how similar you are to a long list of specific Indian community reference groups, with a ranked shortlist of the closest ones.
• The deep structure of Indian ancestry. Neither shows your ANI and ASI balance, or the steppe and AASI components that researchers use to describe Indian population history.
• A consistent view across relatives on different tests. If your father tested with 23andMe and your aunt with AncestryDNA, their reports use different populations and cannot be compared side by side. Run both raw files through the same analysis and they can.

None of this makes the original reports wrong. Think of a Helixline upload as a companion that reads the same raw data with a South Asian lens.

What the research says about Indian ancestry

Every result you read on a South Asian ancestry report rests on about fifteen years of peer-reviewed research. Four papers are worth knowing by name.

ANI and ASI: two ancient populations (Reich et al., 2009)

In 2009 David Reich, Kumarasamy Thangaraj and colleagues analysed 25 diverse Indian groups in Nature and found strong evidence for two ancient, genetically divergent populations ancestral to most Indians today. They called them Ancestral North Indians (ANI), genetically close to Middle Easterners, Central Asians and Europeans, and Ancestral South Indians (ASI), as distinct from ANI and East Asians as those are from each other. ANI ancestry ranged from 39% to 71% in most Indian groups. They also found that allele frequency differences between groups in India are larger than in Europe, a signature of strong founder effects maintained for thousands of years by endogamy.

When the mixing happened (Moorjani et al., 2013)

A follow-up in the American Journal of Human Genetics by Priya Moorjani and colleagues studied 73 groups and dated ANI and ASI mixture to roughly 1,900 to 4,200 years ago. Their conclusion was that India went from a region where major population mixture was common to one where mixture, even between closely related groups, became rare because of a shift to endogamy. That is why community-level comparisons can be informative for Indians in a way they often are not for Europeans.

Steppe, Iranian-related and AASI ancestry (Narasimhan et al., 2019)

Ancient DNA sharpened the picture. A 2019 study in Science by Vagheesh Narasimhan and colleagues analysed 523 ancient individuals. They found that the main source of ancestry in modern South Asians is a prehistoric gradient between people related to early hunter-gatherers of Iran and of Southeast Asia. After the decline of the Indus Valley Civilization, its people mixed with groups to the southeast to form ASI, and mixed with descendants of steppe pastoralists who, starting about 4,000 years ago, spread via Central Asia to form ANI. The study calls the indigenous South Asian hunter-gatherer component AASI (Ancient Ancestral South Indian), and estimated it at up to about 60% in some present-day groups.

An Indus Valley genome (Shinde et al., 2019)

The same year, Vasant Shinde and colleagues published in Cell the first genome from an individual of the Indus Valley Civilization, from Rakhigarhi. The individual fitted as a mixture of ancient Iranian-related ancestry (the largest component) and Southeast Asian hunter-gatherer-related ancestry, with little if any steppe pastoralist ancestry. For a deeper explainer, see ANI vs ASI: the two ancestries in every Indian's DNA.

What this means for you: almost every Indian is a mixture of the same few ancient sources in different proportions. A Punjabi in Brisbane will usually carry more ANI and steppe-related ancestry than a Tamil in Brisbane, but both share the same deep ingredients. Those proportions describe populations over thousands of years. They say nothing about status, and no proportion is better than another.

What a Helixline upload adds

You do not need a new saliva sample. The raw data file behind your 23andMe (v3, v4 or v5), AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or LivingDNA results can be re-analysed against 7,600+ global reference samples, with the South Asian side organised into 140+ South Asian community reference groups. The Upload Ancestry report includes:

• A state-level ancestry breakdown, showing which Indian states and regions your ancestry is most similar to.
• Community similarity comparisons with a closest-match shortlist. The reference panel includes groups that many Australian and New Zealand families will recognise, such as Jat Sikh, Ramgarhia Sikh, Punjabi Khatri and Punjabi Arora from Punjab; Patel/Patidar, Lohana and Koli from Gujarat; Kamma, Kapu, Reddy and Telugu Brahmin from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; Nair, Ezhava/Thiyya and Syrian Christian groups from Kerala; Vellalar, Nadar and Tamil Brahmin groups from Tamil Nadu; and Bihari Yadav, Kurmi, Koeri and Uttar Pradesh Brahmin groups from the girmitiya heartland.
• ANI and ASI composition, with steppe and AASI components, and chromosome painting across your 22 autosomes.
• Y-DNA and mtDNA haplogroups, your direct paternal and maternal lines, where your raw file includes those markers.

These are similarity comparisons. DNA cannot identify or prove a caste, and a closest match to a reference group is not a statement that you belong to it. Upload Complete adds 30+ health and wellness traits, carrier screening and pharmacogenomics (how genes relate to medicine response), with downloadable PDF reports. These are informational insights, not a diagnosis, and Upload Complete gets an extra review by a Helixline expert before release, so it can take a day or two longer.

Plan	Australia	New Zealand	What you get
Upload Ancestry	A$38	A$38 or US$25	State-level breakdown, 140+ community comparisons, ANI/ASI, steppe and AASI, haplogroups
Upload Complete	A$76	A$76 or US$50	Everything above plus wellness traits, carrier screening, pharmacogenomics and PDF reports

How it works

1. Choose your plan on helixline.in/upload and pay in Australian dollars by card. From New Zealand, choose Australian dollars or US dollars; we do not charge in New Zealand dollars. PayPal is also offered and charges in US dollars.
2. Sign in with the same email and upload your file. You can upload the .zip as it is, or the .txt or .csv inside it.
3. Your report appears in your Helixline dashboard within 1-2 days of the file being received and validated, and we email you when it is ready.

If your file cannot be processed, or you change your mind before analysis starts, you get a full refund (see the upload terms). Your raw file is stored encrypted in India while your account is open, you can delete it instantly from your dashboard at any time, and we never sell personal or genetic data. More detail for Australian and New Zealand customers is on our Australia and New Zealand page.

How to download your raw data

Menus change from time to time, but the route is usually as below. Download the file even if you are not ready to upload yet: it is the one part of your test that is fully yours.

23andMe

1. Sign in at 23andme.com and open Settings from your profile.
2. Find the 23andMe Data section and choose to download your raw data.
3. Confirm with your password and the verification email, then save the .zip file when it is ready.

AncestryDNA

1. Sign in at ancestry.com and open your DNA page.
2. Click the Settings gear and scroll to Download Raw DNA Data.
3. Confirm, then open the email AncestryDNA sends you and use the link before it expires. Save the .zip.

MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA and LivingDNA

On MyHeritage, open the DNA menu, choose Manage DNA kits, then Actions and Download raw DNA data; the download arrives by email as a .zip holding a .csv. FamilyTreeDNA and LivingDNA files work too. Accepted formats are .txt, .csv, .zip, .vcf and .gz, up to 250 MB.

One tip for families: download the raw files of every relative who has tested, especially parents and grandparents. Their files carry more of the older generations than yours does, and a parent's raw file can be uploaded on their behalf with their permission.

Gift a kit to your parents in India

For many Indian Australians and New Zealanders, the people who hold the oldest part of the family story still live in India: parents, grandparents, an uncle who stayed in the village. Testing them can tell you more than testing yourself, because you inherited only about half of each parent's DNA.

You can buy a Helixline kit from Australia or New Zealand and have it delivered to them in India. At helixline.in/buy, choose "Someone in India" at checkout and enter their Indian address and mobile number. You pay in rupees with your Australian or New Zealand card. The kit arrives in 3-4 days, the saliva sample is collected from the same door with free doorstep pickup, and results arrive in 2-3 weeks from the moment the sample reaches the lab. Our gift page covers occasion wrapping and a printed note.

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

Samples are processed by an ISO 15189 certified Indian lab partner and the data stays in India. Helixline kits ship within India as standard. If you would like a kit delivered to you in Australia or New Zealand, that can be arranged on request with a quote through our international page, though uploading an existing raw file is usually the quickest route for anyone who has already tested.

Reading the results as a family

A few habits make family results far more useful. Compare generations: a parent's report is closer to the grandparents than yours. Expect siblings to differ slightly, because each child inherits a different half of each parent's DNA. Keep paper records alongside the genetics, such as emigration passes for girmitiya ancestors, Partition-era documents, or a family priest's records, because DNA describes populations while paper names people. And read community similarities as just that: similarity to reference groups, never membership, rank or proof of anything. Communities are diverse within themselves, and many families carry more than one story. For more on testing across the diaspora, see our NRI and diaspora DNA ancestry guide.

Sources and further reading

• Australian Bureau of Statistics, People in Australia who were born in India, 2021 Census QuickStats: abs.gov.au
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, Cultural diversity of Australia (2021 Census article): abs.gov.au
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australia 2021 Census All persons QuickStats: abs.gov.au
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, People in Greater Melbourne who were born in India, 2021: abs.gov.au
• Australian Bureau of Statistics, People in Australia who were born in Fiji, 2021: abs.gov.au
• Stats NZ, 2023 Census ethnic group summaries: Indian: stats.govt.nz
• Stats NZ, People of Asian ethnicities living in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2023 Census infographic: stats.govt.nz
• AncestryDNA, Ancestral Regions 2026 White Paper (October 8, 2026): ancestrycdn.com
• 23andMe, Central and South Asian populations update (July 2024): 23andme.org
• 23andMe, 44 new South Asian genetic groups (January 2025): 23andme.org
• Reich et al., Reconstructing Indian population history, Nature, 2009: PubMed
• Moorjani et al., Genetic evidence for recent population mixture in India, American Journal of Human Genetics, 2013: PubMed
• Narasimhan et al., The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia, Science, 2019: PubMed
• Shinde et al., An ancient Harappan genome lacks ancestry from steppe pastoralists or Iranian farmers, Cell, 2019: PubMed
• Wikipedia, Indo-Fijians and South Indians in Fiji (girmit history): Indo-Fijians, South Indians in Fiji
• Wikipedia, Indian New Zealanders (early Punjabi and Gujarati migration): wikipedia.org

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I get a Helixline ancestry report from Australia or New Zealand?

Yes. If you have already tested with 23andMe, AncestryDNA, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA or LivingDNA, download your raw data file and upload it at helixline.in/upload. Upload Ancestry costs A$38 and Upload Complete costs A$76, and results arrive within 1-2 days. Helixline kits ship within India as standard; delivery to Australia or New Zealand can be arranged on request with a quote through our international page, and many families instead gift a kit to parents in India.

Which currency do New Zealanders pay in?

We do not charge in New Zealand dollars. From New Zealand you can choose Australian dollars (A$38 for Upload Ancestry, A$76 for Upload Complete) or US dollars ($25 or $50), whichever your card handles better. PayPal is also offered and charges in US dollars.

Does AncestryDNA now show Indian regions?

Yes. AncestryDNA's update of October 8, 2026 raised its total from 146 to 302 regions, and its 2026 white paper lists many named South Asian regions, including several Punjab regions, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Coastal Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Bengal, Sindh, Nepal and Sri Lanka. A Helixline upload reads the same raw file a different way, adding community-level similarity, an ANI and ASI breakdown with steppe and AASI components, and haplogroups.

Why does 23andMe say "Broadly South Asian"?

"Broadly South Asian" is the label 23andMe uses for DNA it can place in South Asia but cannot assign confidently to one of its more specific South Asian populations. It reflects the limits of the reference data behind the estimate, not a problem with your DNA. Uploading the same raw file to a South Asia focused analysis can resolve more of it.

Can DNA tell an Indo-Fijian family which district in India they came from?

Not on its own. DNA can show whether your ancestry leans toward the Uttar Pradesh and Bihar belt, toward South India, or a mix, and which community reference groups you are most similar to. The district, thana and village of a girmitiya ancestor come from paper records such as Fiji emigration passes. The two work best together.

Can a DNA test tell me my caste or community?

No. DNA cannot identify or prove a caste. Ancestry results are similarity comparisons with reference groups, not membership of any group. Communities are diverse within themselves, and two siblings can show slightly different closest matches.

Ready to see what your own file shows? Upload your raw data to Helixline from A$38, or gift a kit to your parents in India.