Indians in Columbus: the 2026 guide to Dublin, Powell, Hilliard, Lewis Center, New Albany and Ohio State

Columbus is the centre of Ohio’s Indian community. The Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 American Community Survey counts 43,614 people (margin of error ±2,484) who identify as Asian Indian, alone or in any combination with another group, in the Columbus metro area. That is about 2.0% of the metro area’s 2,175,788 residents, 32.5% of its 134,324 Asian residents and 39% of the 111,815 Asian Indians in Ohio. Separately, 25,778 residents of the metro area (±1,894) were born in India, whatever their ethnicity. The survey is a sample, so every figure is an estimate, and it counts how people describe themselves, not passports or visas: an F-1 student at Ohio State, an engineer on an H-1B, a green-card holder and an Ohio-born child all fall into it. This guide uses the 2020–2024 release because it is the newest one the Census Bureau had published when the page was written.

“Columbus” on an offer letter or a lease can mean the city itself, which holds 17,891 of the metro area’s Asian Indians, or a suburb in Franklin, Delaware or Union County with its own city income tax, school district and rents. The community’s centre of gravity is north-west of downtown — Dublin, Powell, Lewis Center and Hilliard — with New Albany to the north-east, and that is where this page spends most of its words.

The national rules — visas and the H-1B lottery, the Social Security number, federal tax, remittances, the OCI card and Indian passports — are in the site’s US topic guides and are linked rather than repeated: jobs and visas, cost of living, the OCI card, passport renewal, sending money to India and what to take to India. Indians in the USA is the country guide, the New York guide covers the consulate that serves Ohio, and the Detroit guide is the nearest city twin in the Midwest.

Indian Columbus is organised around a university, a handful of large employers and a ring of suburbs that families choose for their school districts. The oldest institutions come from the 1970s and 1980s. The Bharatiya Hindu Temple began in 1975 as a weekly devotional singing evening at a resident’s home, was incorporated as the Vedanta Society of Central Ohio in the early 1980s and opened as a temple in an old house on Westerville Road on 6 December 1985. It bought 22 acres in Powell in 1991, and its new temple was consecrated on 9–10 July 1994; it had about 2,000 members in 2010, according to Wikipedia. The Telugu Association of Central Ohio was registered in 1983 and the Guru Nanak Religious Society, the Sikh congregation, was founded in 1982. ISKCON’s first Columbus temple opened near Ohio State around Prabhupada’s visit in May 1969, and Wikipedia calls it the oldest Hindu temple in Ohio; it has stood on West 8th Avenue since 1983.

The newer institutions are further out. The Sri Saibaba Temple Society of Ohio began as a Thursday bhajan in a devotee’s house in February 1999, bought 7.73 acres on Lewis Center Road in 2006 and inaugurated its temple on 25 April 2012. The Jain Center of Central Ohio, formed in 1991, opened its temple in Lewis Center in July 2012 with about 700 people at the opening, and the Sri Venkateswara Temple of Central Ohio was launched in Powell in 2015. ISKCON bought 53 acres in Hilliard in 2017 and broke ground for a new temple on 25 June 2022. Ohio State is the other engine: Ohio hosted 39,140 international students in 2024/25, ninth in Open Doors’ ranking of states, 35.8% of them from India, and Ohio State’s Columbus campus had 7,409 (Open Doors 2025). The state’s Office of Research found in December 2023 that 35% of Asian Ohioans are of Asian Indian ancestry, and that of employed Asian Ohioans 21% work in computing, engineering and science, 16% in management and 12% in health care (2022 ACS).

The numbers

All counts below are the Census Bureau’s 2020–2024 American Community Survey, table B02018, people who identify as Asian Indian alone or in any combination, read through Census Reporter on 23 October 2026. The share is of all residents of the place.

Franklin and Delaware Counties together hold 86% of the metro total. The margins of error are large for places this size, so the order of Dublin, Orange Township and Liberty Township, whose ranges overlap, is not reliable, and the township and city rows overlap or sit side by side, so they cannot be added together. Small estimates need care too: the survey puts Gahanna at 70 (±62), Worthington at 98 (±87) and Grove City at 145 (±199) Asian Indian residents, which says that few live there and not much more.

Where Indians actually live

• Dublin and the north-west corridor — Dublin has more Asian Indian residents (5,435, or 11.0%) than any other city in the table apart from Columbus itself. The city runs into Delaware and Union Counties as well (its own tax guide says so), Sawmill Road is the shopping street, Cardinal Health has its headquarters there, and Jerome Township in Union County is 15.7%.
• Powell, Lewis Center and Delaware County — the Bharatiya Hindu Temple, the Sri Saibaba temple, the Jain Center and Chinmaya Mission are all in the Powell and Lewis Center area. Delaware County’s median household income, $133,540, is well above Franklin County’s $75,176 (all households, ACS 2020–2024), and the Olentangy schools are the draw.
• Hilliard and the west — a smaller and more mixed share (2.8%, with a wide margin), with ISKCON’s future temple site on Walker Road and the Hilliard City Schools.
• New Albany and the north-east — 6.2% in the city, the Intel site, and the highest rents and household incomes in this guide’s table.
• Upper Arlington, Worthington, Westerville and Gahanna — close to Ohio State and downtown, with small Indian counts.
• The city of Columbus — 17,891 people, many of them students and hospital staff around Ohio State; ISKCON, the gurdwara and the BAPS mandir are inside the city, and Patel Brothers’ store at 6600 Saw Mill Road is on its north-west edge.
• Reynoldsburg and the east — 2.6% Indian, and a larger Nepali and Bhutanese community (see the neighbours section).

The rule of thumb: the Ohio State area, the Short North or downtown for a first year without children, Dublin, Powell, Lewis Center, Hilliard or New Albany once there are children and a school district to choose, and a car in all of them.

Regions and languages

The census does not count regions of origin or home languages for places this small, but the associations do the counting: the Federation of Indian Associations’ member list names Telugu (TACO, APCO and the Columbus Telangana Association), Tamil, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Malayali, Odia, Sindhi and Vindhya groups. The wider picture is a professional one: Ohio’s Asian households had a median income of about $90,400 in the 2022 survey, against $65,700 for all Ohio households, according to the state’s Office of Research.

A note on the November election

Ohio votes for governor on Tuesday 3 November 2026. The Republican nominee, Vivek Ramaswamy, was born in Cincinnati to Indian immigrant parents; the Democratic nominee is Amy Acton, and Newsweek’s poll round-up of 8 October 2026 described the early-October surveys as mixed. Only US citizens can vote; most readers of this guide, on temporary visas or green cards, cannot.

The national steps — the Social Security number, a bank account without a credit history, keeping your visa status — are in the jobs guide and the cost-of-living guide. This is the central Ohio order of things, in which the car comes early and a second tax office joins the first.

1. A furnished room or a short stay, not a lease. Landlords want income proof, a credit check and often a guarantor. An extended stay near the office in Dublin, Polaris or Easton, or a room in a shared house, buys the fortnight you need. Never transfer money for a room you have not stood in.
2. The Social Security number. Apply once your status allows; the licence office, the lease and the second bank account all ask for it.
3. A bank account and a US number. Take the passport, visa papers, offer letter and an address. Remittance apps and their fees are compared in sending money to India.
4. Decide about the car on day one. Central Ohio is built for driving, and the suburbs where the community lives are far apart; see getting around. A car means an Ohio licence, insurance and registration.
5. An Ohio licence. Ohio State’s international office says a scholar who will be in the US for more than 30 days and drives needs an Ohio licence. For its own H-1B scholars it lists the passport, the I-94, the visa stamp, the original I-797, a department letter issued within the previous 60 days and two proofs of Ohio residence; another employer’s checklist will differ. An Ohio licence expires with the immigration document it was issued on. The page warns that the rules are subject to a federal court injunction, so check the Bureau of Motor Vehicles’ own list before you book.
6. Health cover from the first day. An employer plan usually starts on day one or the first of the next month; ask which. If you have none, read the health section, because the Medicaid rules for non-citizens changed on 1 October 2026.
7. Your city income tax. Ohio cities tax wages, and the city where you work is paid first; ask the payroll department to withhold for both the work city and the home city, and read the cost section. Dublin requires every resident aged 18 or over to file a return.
8. Utilities and internet. Ask the landlord what is in the rent and what the winter bill was; book the internet installation the day you sign.
9. A school district, if you have children. The address decides the school, and district lines do not follow city lines. Check the district before you sign a lease, not after; see schools.
10. The consulate, only when you need it. Passports, OCI cards and visas go through VFS Global’s Columbus centre to the New York consulate; read the consulate section before you book or pay anything.
11. A Sunday at a temple. The Sunday programme and langar at the gurdwara, an afternoon at the Powell temple or the Lewis Center Sai temple, or the Sunday feast at ISKCON will produce the number of a pandit, a tax preparer and a dentist faster than any search, and the groups on Namaste Community (below) do the same without knowing anyone first.

Rent in central Ohio is moderate by national standards: the census median gross rent for the metro area, $1,274, sits below the national $1,413 and above Ohio’s $1,034 (all 2020–2024), and the suburbs the community prefers are dearer than the city. Zumper’s city pages, updated on 22–23 October 2026, give average apartment rents for a one- and a two-bedroom of $1,150 and $1,335 in Columbus, $1,328 and $1,822 in Dublin, $1,178 and $1,696 in Hilliard, $1,328 and $1,571 in Powell, $1,399 and $1,525 in New Albany, $1,131 and $1,309 in Westerville and $999 and $1,339 in Worthington. Read them as a guide only. Zumper’s own pages call the same figure “average” in one sentence and “median” in the next, the sample is small in Powell and New Albany (its one-year changes there are up 17% and down 16%), and for Dublin it shows a figure of $1,920 for all rentals, houses included, down 22% on the year.

The Census Bureau measures something else: what every tenant actually pays, older leases and rented houses included. Its 2020–2024 median gross rent is $1,274 for the metro area, $1,302 in Franklin County and $1,492 in Delaware County. By place: Columbus $1,295, Dublin $1,686, Hilliard $1,632, Upper Arlington $1,588, Powell $2,194, New Albany $2,355, Westerville $1,364 and Worthington $1,232.

How renting works here

• The deposit. Ohio has no statewide maximum for a deposit, according to LandlordStudio’s July 2025 summary of the law, so read the lease and ask what is refundable. The statute, R.C. 5321.16, makes the landlord pay 5% a year on the part of the deposit above $50 or one month’s rent once you have been in the home six months or more.
• Getting it back. The landlord must deliver an itemised written notice of any deduction, with the money due, within 30 days of the end of the lease and your handing back possession. Give your forwarding address in writing: without it you cannot claim the statute’s damages or attorney’s fees. If the landlord wrongly withholds money, you can recover it plus damages equal to the amount withheld and reasonable attorney’s fees, though a 2025 appeal-court decision (2025-Ohio-2636) read the remedy narrowly and let a landlord’s own damage claim reduce it.
• Income tests and guarantors. Most landlords want a multiple of the rent in monthly income, or a guarantor; the cost-of-living guide explains the workarounds for someone with no US credit history.
• Buying later. Some families buy once the children are in school; this guide did not price houses. Delaware County’s median household income of $133,540 and Dublin’s $160,296 (ACS 2020–2024, all households) show what the neighbours earn, not what a house costs.

Scams to expect

A flat at half the going rate from an “owner abroad” who wants the deposit before a viewing; a “landlord” who asks for the deposit by gift card or wire; a basement unit advertised without a second exit; a WhatsApp “broker” who wants cash for a listing. Nobody legitimate asks you to pay to see a flat.

Central Ohio is a driving region. The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) runs the buses, and its on-demand COTA//Plus service covers three zones, in Grove City, Westerville and the South Side, but the stretches between Dublin, Powell, Hilliard and New Albany are served by few routes, and most households in the suburbs run at least one car. The fares below were read on COTA’s own page on 23 October 2026, which carries no effective date.

COTA waives fares on days when the National Weather Service’s Wilmington office issues a heat or cold advisory or warning, and it adjusts services in January, May and September.

Driving: licence, insurance and registration

The licence steps are in your first two weeks. Ohio State’s page lists three routes: the standard route for someone without a US licence or an exempt foreign one, which starts with a temporary permit after a written test at a BMV office and then lists driver education, supervised practice and a road test (check which steps apply at your age); an exemption from the written and road tests for people aged 21 or over with a valid licence from Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea or Taiwan, which does not include India; and conversion of a valid licence from another US state, which the page says skips the training. Ohio requires insurance, registration and plates for any car you drive, and driving without them can bring a citation. The cost of insurance is in the cost section.

The airport and flying to India

John Glenn Columbus International Airport (CMH) is the region’s airport. Indian Eagle’s Columbus page, read on 23 October 2026, says every journey to India needs at least one connection, though one of its own tables contradicts that, and its sample itineraries were one- and two-stop trips through hubs such as Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles, Frankfurt and Dubai, of 18 to 24 hours or more in all. Fares and schedules change weekly, so check the airlines; the Detroit guide describes the same trade-off for the other Midwestern airport, and what to take to India covers baggage and customs.

Columbus winters are cold and grey but milder than Detroit’s. At John Glenn Columbus International Airport the January daily mean is 29.6°F (a high of 37.1°F and a low of 22.0°F), snow averages 28.2 inches a year on about 28 days with measurable snow, and the July mean is 75.4°F; precipitation is about 41.6 inches a year, and the all-time record low is −22°F (NOAA 1991–2020 normals, as Wikipedia’s climate page tabulates them). The Detroit guide gives 25.8°F and 45.0 inches for the same measures there.

Buy a proper coat, hat, gloves and boots in October, before the first cold week. The cost-of-living guide budgets $800–1,500 for winter clothing for a family of four who have never owned any. In a suburb the car comes first: a scraper, a blanket and jump leads in the boot from November, all-season or winter tyres, and a garage or covered space if the rent allows it.

Heating, snow and the lease

Heating is the utility that swings most between July and January. Ask the landlord whether heat is in the rent, who pays for the furnace, and what last winter’s bill was; ask who clears the snow from the steps and the drive, because a lease for a house or townhouse can hand that job to the tenant.

Rules vary by town

Each city and township sets its own winter parking and sidewalk-clearing rules. Read the town’s page when you sign the lease and follow any parking or snow notices it issues. Remember that COTA waives its fares on advisory days, and that a visitor from India in December needs a coat as well; parents travelling in January should check the forecast before the flight.

Central Ohio’s economy rests on a university, a state capital, banks and insurers, retail and logistics, and health systems. The most recent list this guide could open is the one the Columbus city budget cites from Columbus Business First, as Hoodline reported it on 2 July 2026: Ohio State University with about 36,433 local employees, OhioHealth with about 28,115 and the State of Ohio with about 24,264. The state’s Office of Research found that employed Asian Ohioans cluster in computing, engineering and science, in management and in health care (see the community section), which matches that map: analysts and engineers at the banks, insurers and consultancies, doctors and nurses in the hospital systems, and academics and researchers at the university.

The big employers

• JPMorgan Chase — about 18,000 workers in Columbus and 20,000 in Ohio, according to the firm’s story of 5 September 2024; its largest single site is the McCoy Center at 1111 Polaris Parkway, unveiled on 14 July 2023, with more than 12,000 employees.
• Nationwide — headquartered at One Nationwide Plaza in Columbus, with about 24,000 employees company-wide and 69th place in the 2026 Fortune 500, according to Wikipedia; a Columbus-only headcount was not confirmed.
• Cardinal Health — headquartered in Dublin, with about 63,900 employees worldwide in 2026 according to Wikipedia’s infobox; its Dublin headcount was not confirmed.
• Honda — car plants in Marysville and East Liberty, north-west of the metro area. Hoodline reported on 13 October 2026, from an Ohio EPA filing, that Honda is considering a third plant for hybrids on about 300 acres beside East Liberty, with about 3,000 workers and an estimated cost of $1.8–2.5 billion; a Honda spokesperson said no final investment decision has been made.
• Ohio State and the hospitals — Ohio State University and its medical centre, OhioHealth and Nationwide Children’s Hospital are the main health and research employers, and all three appear in the visa-sponsor list below.

Intel at New Albany

Intel announced its Ohio One campus at New Albany, on the north-eastern edge of the metro area, in January 2022, with the first chips due in 2025. CNBC reported on 21 October 2026 that Intel had installed the first major structural truss that day, that it now aims to finish building the first fab in 2030 with operations in 2030 or 2031, and that a second fab is planned for completion in 2031. WOSU reported on 26 August 2026 that the campus is described as a $28 billion project on nearly 1,000 acres, that Intel had invested more than $5 billion by the end of 2025 (closer to $7 billion with contract commitments), and that Intel has not said how much is built or named a major outside customer; reports that SK Hynix may lease space were unconfirmed. A county commissioner told WOSU he understood the specialised chip-making tools had not yet been ordered. In short, the plant is a 2030s employer, not one that is hiring in volume now, and the nearer-term work is construction and suppliers.

Data centres

Amazon Web Services said in December 2024 that it would invest another $10 billion in Ohio data centres, bringing its committed spending in the state to more than $23 billion by the end of 2029; it already runs campuses in two central Ohio counties, and had not named the new sites.

Who sponsors visas in Columbus

The federal labour-condition applications (LCAs) filed for work in Columbus in fiscal 2025, as MyVisaJobs tabulates them, show JPMorgan Chase far ahead with 101, then Deloitte Consulting (35), Ohio State (23), Huntington National Bank (15), NetJets and Deloitte & Touche (12 each). None of TCS, Infosys, Cognizant, Wipro, HCLTech or Tech Mahindra appeared in the top 100. An LCA is a filing, not an approval, and renewals and transfers count, so use the list to see who sponsors, not how many visas exist. The Indian IT services firms may serve Ohio clients from elsewhere; this guide could not confirm an office for any of them with a dated source and leaves them out.

What Ohio pays

Ohio’s minimum wage rose to $11.00 on 1 January 2026, with a tipped cash wage of $5.50; the federal $7.25 still applies to employers with gross receipts of $405,000 or less, and to 14- and 15-year-olds. State and city tax and take-home pay are in the cost section.

The visa question

The H-1B is the main route and has changed twice this year: a wage-weighted lottery for the 2027 season, and a $100,000 payment on some new petitions that courts have contested. All of that is national and set out in the jobs guide, with the legal routes and how to check an employer’s sponsorship record. The consultancy world has its own risks, explained in Indian employers and consultancies; “pay for a guaranteed job and a visa” is the oldest scam, described in the scams section of the jobs guide.

Central Ohio’s rents and house prices are moderate, and what surprises newcomers is the tax arrangement: a low state rate and a city tax on top, paid first to the city where you work. The cost-of-living guide prices six other states, and Ohio is not one of them, so use its method and its grocery basket with the local numbers below.

Ohio income tax

Ohio’s House Bill 96, signed on 30 June 2025, moved the state to a flat rate in two steps. For the 2026 tax year the rate is 2.75% on non-business income over $26,050, and nothing is taxed below that line, according to EY’s and Plante Moran’s summaries of the law (the Tax Department’s own pages refused our reader). That is lower than Illinois’s 4.95% and Michigan’s 4.25%, and above the states that levy no tax on wages. On top of federal tax and FICA, the take-home pay table shows how the sums work for a state with a flat rate.

City income tax

Ohio cities levy their own tax on wages, and some school districts levy one as well, so ask whether yours does. The City of Dublin’s Guide to Taxes (updated February 2026) lists the central Ohio rates: Columbus 2.5%, Hilliard 2.5%, Upper Arlington 2.5%, Worthington 2.5% and Gahanna 2.5%; Dublin 2.0%, Westerville 2.0%, New Albany 2.0% and Grove City 2.0%; and Pickerington 1.0%. Powell’s page, as a search listing showed it, gives 2.0%. Tax is paid first to the city where you work and then to the city where you live. There is no reciprocity between cities, but Dublin gives its residents a 100% credit up to 2% for tax paid to the city where they work. The guide’s examples on a $65,000 salary: a Dublin resident working in Dublin owes $1,300; one working in Columbus owes $1,625 to Columbus and nothing to Dublin; one working in Pickerington owes $650 there and $650 to Dublin. The credit your home city gives is that city’s own rule, so ask the payroll department which cities it withholds for.

What the neighbours earn

Median household income in the 2020–2024 survey is $81,945 for the metro area, $71,389 for Ohio and $80,734 for the US. By place: Columbus $66,082, Hilliard $128,189, Dublin $160,296, Powell $195,495 and New Albany $238,250. These are all households in each place, not Indian households.

Car insurance

Experian’s analysis of policies sold through its marketplace in September 2026, published on 13 October, puts the Ohio average at $1,586 a year across all coverage levels, $2,212 a year ($184 a month) for full coverage and $1,281 for minimum coverage. It gave no figure for Columbus. The US guide notes that a driver with no US record is quoted above the state average in the first year, and that the premium falls once you hold a US licence and a clean year. The figures are marketplace averages, not quotes: get quotes for the address where the car will be kept.

What a month looks like

For a single newcomer in a one-bedroom in Dublin or Hilliard: $1,180–1,330 in rent, car insurance (a car is close to essential), the health premium your employer deducts, groceries and the heating bill, with city and state tax coming out of the pay cheque. For a family in a two-bedroom: add childcare, which this guide could not price for Ohio from a source it could open, so ask three providers near your address before you decide where to live. The costs newcomers underestimate are insurance, winter clothing and dental work, which is insured separately. Groceries are where the Indian saving is: a month of atta, dal, rice and spices from Patel Brothers or India Grocers costs much less in bulk than in small packets from a general supermarket, and the remittance guide explains the cheapest way to send money home.

American health care runs on insurance, and the first job in Ohio is to know what yours is. An employer plan is the normal route for H-1B, L-1 and most professional arrivals, with a premium taken from each pay cheque and a deductible before the plan pays; students are covered by their university’s plan. What a family plan costs in 2026, what an emergency-room visit bills and how to insure parents visiting on a tourist visa are covered in the cost-of-living guide. Choose an in-network primary-care doctor in the first month, ask your employer which hospital systems are in the network, and use an urgent-care centre for anything that is not an emergency.

The hospital systems

The large employers are OhioHealth, Ohio State University and its Wexner Medical Center, and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, which with the other systems appear among central Ohio’s largest employers and H-1B sponsors (see work and employers). The right hospital is the one in your plan’s network; ask the plan before choosing a primary-care doctor.

If you are not covered

• HealthCare.gov serves Ohio. Open enrolment for 2027 plans begins on 1 November 2026. The enhanced federal tax credits that held premiums down lapsed at the end of 2025; Ohio had the largest enrolment drop of any state, with roughly a third of its half-million marketplace members leaving, and the 11 insurers still in the state were proposing average increases of 14.7% for 2027 when InsuranceNewsNet reported on the filings, which are not final. People on work and student visas can still buy a plan, at full price (see the health section of the US guide).
• Medicaid. From 1 October 2026 Ohio keeps full Medicaid for green-card holders who have met the five-year waiting period, Cuban and Haitian entrants, citizens of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau, and children under 21 and pregnant or postpartum women, while lawful immigrants without permanent residence, refugees and asylees among them, lose coverage, according to Spectrum News on 22 September 2026. From January 2027 expansion enrollees face an 80-hour monthly work, study or service requirement and six-monthly renewals; the Center for Community Solutions estimates that the federal changes together could cut around 337,000 Ohio enrollees within the first year. Ask about the effect of any benefit on a green card before you apply for it, not after.
• Free clinics and community health centres take uninsured patients, often on a sliding scale; dial 211 for the nearest.

Emergencies and mental health

Dial 911 for an emergency and 988 for the national suicide and crisis line. For a medical bill you cannot pay, ask the hospital for its financial-assistance application before you pay anything. Indian prescriptions are not honoured; get US prescriptions for anything long-term.

Public schools in Ohio are run by local districts, and the district — not the city — is the reason families pay what they do for a house in Dublin, Powell or New Albany. District boundaries do not follow city or township lines, so check the district of the exact address before you sign a lease. This page does not rank schools. The table gives each district’s size and the share of pupils the federal Common Core of Data records as Asian, which is every Asian group and not only Indian pupils, for the 2024–25 school year; it says who is there, not how well they are taught.

Reynoldsburg and Licking Heights are on the list for a different reason from Dublin and Olentangy: the Asian category includes Nepali and Bhutanese pupils, and the census counts a large Nepali and Bhutanese population around Reynoldsburg and in Licking County (see the neighbours section).

Results

Ohio rates districts with a state report card of 1 to 5 stars in half-star steps; three stars means a district is meeting state standards, and the stars replaced A–F letter grades in 2021. The 2026 report cards came out in mid-September 2026; the Columbus Dispatch’s report on them is dated 15 September. It put Olentangy, New Albany-Plain and Upper Arlington at five stars, Dublin at 4.5 stars, Pickerington at 4.5 (up from 4) and Columbus City Schools at 2.5 (up half a star); this guide could not open the pages that gave Hilliard’s, Worthington’s and Westerville’s overall ratings and leaves them out. A star rating is a district average built from several measures, among them achievement and progress, and it is worth reading by school and measure in the state’s own report-card tool, not by headline.

Admissions, the calendar and the age rule

Ohio children enrol at the school their address is assigned to, and districts set their own open-enrolment policies for children from outside; read the district’s enrolment page. From 2026–27 a statewide standard applies: a child must be five on or before the first day of instruction in the enrolling district, which Gahanna-Jefferson’s notice puts at 20 August 2026 for its calendar. In earlier years a district could choose 1 August or 30 September. Diwali falls on a Sunday this year, 8 November, so no school day is lost to it; in other years check the district calendar.

Childcare, universities and weekend schools

This guide could not price childcare for Ohio from a source it could open, so ask three providers near the address you are considering. For students, Ohio hosted 39,140 international students in 2024/25, 35.8% of them from India, the largest group, and Ohio State’s Columbus campus had 7,409; Nepal was third at 5.9% (Open Doors 2025). The rules for F-1 status are in the jobs guide. Chinmaya Mission Columbus runs weekly Bala Vihar classes for children and Samskritam classes at 5302 Liberty Road North in Powell, ISKCON’s navigation lists a Sunday school, and the Bharatiya Hindu Temple has offered Hindi classes since 1990; ask in the groups below which other classes are running now.

Indian shopping in central Ohio is concentrated on one road: Sawmill Road, which runs through Dublin and the north-west edge of Columbus and carries the two big grocers and a string of restaurants. Hilliard, Powell and the Lewis Center side have their own restaurants, and the east and north-east are thinner. The grocers, NeeHee’s and Taj Palace named below were checked against their own sites or the chain’s store list on 23 October 2026; the other restaurants are from Restaurantji’s 2026 lists for Dublin and Hilliard, which show the listings are live but are not a critic’s selection.

The grocers

• Patel Brothers — 6600 Saw Mill Road, Columbus 43235, phone 614-792-8484, open Monday to Sunday 11 am to 8 pm according to the chain’s store list. It is the only Patel Brothers store the list names for central Ohio.
• India Grocers — moved in mid-October 2026 from 5843 Sawmill Road to 6569 Sawmill Road, Dublin 43017, the former Big Lots building, which What Now Columbus said in June would become its new home. 614NOW reported on 19 October 2026 that the new store is 40,000 square feet and open 10 am to 8:30 pm daily, and an employee told it this is the largest Indian supermarket in the Midwest; that is the store’s claim, not ours.
• Bhavani Cash & Carry — on Festival Lane in Dublin, pictured in the Columbus Food Letter’s guide to Indian markets of 11 November 2025.

Restaurants

• NeeHee’s Indian Vegetarian Restaurant — 6080 Sawmill Road, Dublin 43017; open Monday to Thursday 11 am to 9:30 pm and Friday and Saturday 11 am to 10 pm, closed Sundays, according to its site.
• Taj Palace Hilliard — 3794 Fishinger Boulevard, Hilliard 43026, 614-771-3870, a family-owned Indian restaurant and bar; open 11:30 am to 9 pm Sunday and Tuesday to Thursday, to 9:30 pm on Friday and Saturday, closed Mondays.
• Aangan India Bistro — 5855 Frantz Road, Dublin, with its own online ordering page.
• Madras Bakery Cafe — 5649 Woerner Temple Road, Dublin; Hyderabad House Indian Restaurant & Bakery — 6395 Perimeter Drive, Dublin; Amul India Restaurant — 5871 Sawmill Road, Dublin; Triveni Express Indian Cafe & Bakery — 7668 Sawmill Road, Dublin.
• Clove Indian Bistro — 6642 Sawmill Road, Columbus; Awadh India Restaurant — 2584 Bethel Road, Columbus; New India Restaurant — 5226 Bethel Center Mall, Columbus.
• Daawat Indian Cuisine — 6542 Hayden Run Road, Hilliard; Awadh by Chef Anand — 8736 Moreland Street, Powell, from its delivery listing.

Sweets, halal and the rest

The bakeries above sell sweets and savouries, and ISKCON Columbus’s site lists a catering service, Govinda’s Bakery and a dosa station. This guide did not check halal certification at any of them, so ask before you buy. Nepali and Bhutanese groceries and restaurants are mostly in the city of Columbus and the east (see the neighbours section). The businesses named here are the ones on the chains’ and restaurants’ own sites or on recent listings — browse the Indian businesses in the US, add the shop that is missing, and review the one that saved your Diwali. The directory is built from member listings, so a missing grocer or restaurant here may simply be a missing listing.

Central Ohio’s large Hindu, Sikh and Jain institutions are in Powell, Lewis Center and the city of Columbus, and most are reached by car. Confirm times with each before going, because hours change for festivals. The US temples page lists other metro areas and does not yet include Columbus, so the places below are named here.

Hindu Columbus

The Powell temple is the oldest of the suburban temples: it began in a house on Westerville Road in 1985 and moved to Powell in 1994, and it hosts the pujas, the language classes and the festivals. The Sai temple in Lewis Center, built from 2010 and inaugurated in 2012, is a Shirdi Sai Baba temple with Ganapati, Hanuman, Raja Rajeshwari and Satyanarayana shrines. ISKCON’s West 8th Avenue temple stands near the Ohio State campus, has an Ohio historical marker (installed in 2003) and, according to Wikipedia, will stay open to serve the Ohio State community when the Hilliard temple is built. The Venkateswara temple’s website could not be read, so ask in the groups below how it is running.

Sikh and Jain Columbus

The Guru Nanak Religious Society’s gurdwara is the region’s main one; as at every gurdwara, visitors cover their heads and remove their shoes, and head coverings are provided. Gurdwaras keep Bandi Chhor Divas on the night of Diwali, and the society’s site did not list a 2026 programme when read. The Jain Center in Lewis Center is the first Jain temple in the Columbus area, according to Wikipedia; its own site refused our reader.

Churches and other communities

The Federation of Indian Associations lists a Tamil church group among its associate members, and the Ohio Wesleyan University chaplain’s list of Columbus-area places of worship names the Bharatiya Hindu Temple as the one Hindu entry. For a church or mosque that worships in your language, ask in the groups below which is nearest.

Indian Columbus is organised by language, region and religion as well as by suburb, and the associations are where the festivals, the language classes and the help happen. Many are volunteer-run, meet in temple halls, banquet rooms and school auditoriums, and change committees every year, so the current contact is usually a number passed on by someone who went last year.

The federation and the India Festival

The Federation of Indian Associations (FIA Ohio) is the umbrella body. Its member list names dozens of groups, and its India Festival was held on Saturday 22 August 2026 at the Ohio Expo Center’s Celeste Center, with more than 100 vendor booths and a free health fair; FIA calls it the largest gathering of the Indian community in a single event in Columbus, and the Columbus Dispatch and FOX28 previewed it on 21 and 19 August. FIA also worked with the New York consulate on the last consular camp this guide could find in the area, on 26 March 2022 at Little Bear Golf Club in Lewis Center; no Ohio camp for 2025 or 2026 turned up.

Regional and language groups

FIA’s regular members include the Telugu Association of Central Ohio, registered in 1983, which celebrates Sankranthi, Ugadi and Deepavali; Andhra People of Central Ohio; the Columbus Telangana Association; the Columbus Tamil Sangam; the Gujarati Mandal of Central Ohio; the Columbus Maharashtra Mandal; the Central Ohio Bengali Cultural Association; Brindavana Kannada Koota; the Central Ohio Malayalee Association; the Orissa Association of Ohio; the Sindhi Association of Central Ohio, whose calendar lists a Cheti Chand celebration in March, a picnic in June, Thadri in August and Diwali in November or December; and the Vindhya Cultural Association. The wider list includes Sewa International, the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, Art of Living, Akshaya Patra, Ekal Vidyalaya, the American Association of Physicians of India, the NRI Vasavi Association, IT Serve Columbus and the Gandhi Memorial Society. Which are active, and who to call, changes yearly; the associations’ own pages and the groups below carry the current contacts.

Classes, culture and the arts

The temples run most of the weekend teaching. Chinmaya Mission’s Bala Vihar and Samskritam classes are in Powell, ISKCON lists a Sunday school, and the Bharatiya Hindu Temple has run Hindi classes since 1990. The Telugu Association publishes an annual magazine, and the Kannada and Marathi groups hold their own cultural programmes. Dance schools and cricket academies run in the Indian suburbs; ask other parents before you pay a term’s fees. Ohio State’s students have their own societies; the Federation lists an Indian Student Association among its members.

Columbus’s festival calendar runs through the temples, the regional associations and rented halls: the India Festival in August, Navratri in October, and Diwali as a run of association evenings. Only dates the organisers publish are given here.

Diwali, explained

Diwali 2026 is on Sunday 8 November, with Dhanteras on Friday 6 November, Choti Diwali on Saturday 7 November, Govardhan Puja and Annakut on Monday 9 November and Bhai Dooj on Tuesday 10 November. DrikPanchang’s timetable for Columbus gives the main Lakshmi puja window as 5:41 to 7:30 pm on 8 November, inside a Pradosh Kaal of 5:22 to 8:08 pm, with the new-moon tithi running from 12:57 am on 8 November to 2:01 am on 9 November; each temple sets its own times. BAPS’s Columbus news listing carried a Diwali and Annakut celebration on 21 October 2025 and one on 2 November 2024 but nothing for 2026, no Diwali programme was visible in the parts of the Sai temple’s and ISKCON’s pages that loaded, and the Powell temple’s site showed nothing at all, so ring each before you go. The Telugu Association and the Sindhi Association list Diwali among their annual events without a 2026 date. The Diwali in Columbus page collects the 2026 events as organisers confirm them, and the New York consulate’s holiday list for 2026 includes Diwali (a Sunday) and Guru Nanak’s Birthday.

The other rhythms

Summer belongs to the India Festival and the picnics, autumn begins with Navratri and ends with Diwali, and winter moves indoors to the temples and halls, where the Telugu and Tamil groups hold Sankranthi and Pongal in January. The events posted near Columbus appear below, and the full Columbus events calendar carries the rest; on 23 October 2026 it listed three upcoming events, so a quiet calendar usually means an organiser has not posted yet, not that nothing is on.

Central Ohio’s Indian community runs on WhatsApp. There are groups for a suburb, an employer’s new joiners, a temple’s volunteers, a language or region, a university’s incoming class, a cricket team and a “rooms in Dublin” market. The groups are how the community has always organised itself, and nothing on this page will change that.

What the groups are good at, and what they are not

They are fast and generous. Ask at ten at night which Powell dentist speaks Telugu, or whether a Hilliard shop is open on Diwali morning, and someone answers before eleven. But you need to know somebody to be added, the links in circulation are often dead, and a group of a thousand strangers is exactly where the “guaranteed job, pay the training fee first” and “room in Dublin, send the deposit today” scams begin. Every member sees your phone number. And a group does not know where you live: a room in Reynoldsburg and a garba in Powell arrive with the same weight as the one around the corner.

What Namaste Community adds

Namaste Community keeps the community’s groups, events and businesses for Columbus in one place, alongside the same pages for other cities and countries.

• Groups for Columbus. The site lists local groups for the area at /groups/in/usa/columbus. They are moderated and limited to people who live within a set distance of the group’s town, and your phone number is never shown to other members. When this page was written, on 23 October 2026, no local group for Columbus had been started yet; everyone in the United States is in the country group, so the first group for your suburb, language or interest is yours to start.
• Events. Garba nights, Diwali programmes and meetups are in the Columbus events calendar, which covers everything within 20 km of a point north-west of downtown, between Dublin, Hilliard and Powell.
• A directory. Grocers, restaurants, temples and services are listed in the US directory, with reviews from people who used them.
• Ask. A question about rent in Dublin, a tax preparer in Hilliard or a Kannada class in Powell can be asked once in the app’s Ask section, where the answer stays for the next person instead of scrolling away, and you can ask without giving your name.

Your first week

1. Open the Columbus groups and join the ones for your suburb, your language or your interest — or start the first. Read before you post.
2. Go to one event in your first fortnight — a Sunday at the gurdwara, an evening aarti in Powell, a garba night, a cricket net. It is the fastest way from “the Indian community in Columbus” as a phrase to three people whose names you know.
3. Ask the question you actually have, and say which suburb you are in: the rent, school and tax answers differ between Dublin, Powell, Hilliard and the city of Columbus.
4. When you have found your flat, your doctor and your grocer, leave a review or an answer for the next person arriving from Hyderabad, Ahmedabad or Kathmandu.

Columbus has a Nepali community that is large by national standards and a Bhutanese one that is larger still in proportion, beside the Indian one (see the shares below): the 2020–2024 survey counts 11,749 Nepalese and 3,127 Bhutanese residents in the metro area, against 43,614 Indians. Everything on this page about renting, tax, schools, health cover and scams applies identically to all of them; the differences are the consulate or embassy, the festival calendar and the aisle you head for. Dashain and Tihar for Nepalis, Eid and the national days for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and the Tamil and Sinhala New Year in April for Sri Lankans fall on different dates from Diwali.

Nepali and Bhutanese

The metro area holds about 4.9% of all the Nepalese residents counted in the United States and about 11% of the Bhutanese. Within it, the city of Columbus has 7,526 Nepalese (±1,769) and 1,596 Bhutanese (±720), Franklin County 8,570 and 1,556, Licking County 1,467 Nepalese and 1,163 Bhutanese, Fairfield County 1,511 and 367, and Reynoldsburg 449 and 245. Nepal is also the third-largest source of Ohio’s international students, at 5.9% (Open Doors 2025). Licking Heights and Reynoldsburg, whose districts are 27.0% and 18.1% Asian, serve areas where the census counts many Nepalese and Bhutanese residents.

Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan

The metro area has 2,560 Pakistani residents, 842 Bangladeshi and 440 Sri Lankan, all small counts with wide margins of error. Their festival dates surface in the groups below, and a Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Nepali, Bhutanese or Sri Lankan newcomer does their consular business with their own country’s embassy or consulate, not the Indian one. Pakistan’s Independence Day on 14 August and India’s on 15 August fall a day apart.

Consular services

Ohio is in the area of the Consulate General of India in New York, at 3 East 64th Street, New York NY 10065. The Embassy network’s list of consulates, effective 1 August 2025, gives its area as Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Delaware; the consulate’s own jurisdiction page still lists eleven states, including the five New England states that the 2025 revision moved to Boston, and Ohio is on both. Since 1 August 2025 consular services have been offered through VFS Global, which opened eight new centres that day, Columbus among them, as sub-centres of the consulate that holds their state. Third-party directories give the Columbus centre as Suite 130, 100 E Campus View Blvd, Columbus OH 43235, open Monday to Saturday 9:00 to 15:30 by appointment, and as serving Ohio, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania applicants; VFS’s own page refused our reader, so confirm the address and your booking there. The decision on a file is made in New York. The fees, documents and steps are national and are in the OCI card guide and the passport renewal guide.

The consulate’s published hours are 9:00 am to 5:30 pm; documents are submitted and consular queries taken on working days from 9:30 to 11:30 am, and documents collected from 4:00 to 4:30 pm. Its consular-query line is +1 (347) 721-9243, answered Monday to Friday from 9:30 am to 1 pm and 2 to 5 pm. On holidays it is open from 10 am to noon for emergency services only. It was closed on Tuesday 20 October 2026 for Dussehra; its 2026 holiday list shows Diwali on Sunday 8 November, Guru Nanak’s Birthday on Tuesday 24 November and Thanksgiving on Thursday 26 November.

Beware of calls from “the consulate”

The consulate posted an advisory on fraudulent calls on 17 July 2026. As a rule, no official calls to ask for personal information or money, a caller who threatens deportation or arrest is a fraudster whatever number appears on your phone, and the “digital arrest” and fake-officer scams are described in the remittance guide.

Help lines

• 911 for police, fire and ambulance; 988 for the suicide and crisis line; 211 for local services and charities.
• Consulate emergencies: the New York consulate’s 24-hour helpline and WhatsApp number is +1 (917) 815-7066, reserved for Indian nationals facing genuine life-safety, distress or legal emergencies; it does not answer routine status checks.
• Free immigration legal help: use a free or low-cost legal service before you pay a consultant; dial 211 for the nearest.

Your status, in 2025–26

The rules around status changed repeatedly in 2025 and 2026, and a mistake now costs more: the weighted H-1B lottery, the $100,000 payment on some new petitions, and the end of open-ended student status for F and J visa holders who enter on or after 15 September 2026 are all set out in the jobs guide. The practical rules: keep copies of every I-797, I-20 and pay slip, never let a grace period run out unnoticed, and treat any caller who says your visa will be cancelled unless you pay as a fraudster.

Safety, honestly

Columbus recorded 81 homicide victims in 2025, down from 126 in 2024, 149 in 2023 and a record 208 in 2021, according to ABC6 on 29 December 2025; the suburbs report their own figures. Most Indian families live in the suburbs, and the practical rules are the ordinary ones: keep valuables out of sight in a parked car, lock it and take the key with you, and be careful late at night in unfamiliar streets. Expect more checks at the door of a temple or gurdwara around festivals, follow the staff’s instructions and report anything that worries you to the police on 911. The scams that hurt newcomers most are housing and job frauds, not street crime: fake listings, “training fees” for jobs, and calls from people pretending to be the consulate, the police or immigration.

The weather, and what to read next

Read the winter section before the first week of December. The national rules on jobs and visas, cost of living, the OCI card, passports and remittances are in the guides linked above, and Indians in the USA lists events, groups and businesses across the country.