Singh beats Smith: The business boom reshaping Western Sydney

In 2025, 56 per cent of new businesses registered across Parramatta, Blacktown, The Hills and Penrith were started by people born in India. Australian-born founders came in second at 16 per cent.

That is not a typo. More than half.

The Lawpath New Business Index tracked company registrations through 2025 and found something that should have been obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to Western Sydney over the past decade. The Indian diaspora is not just growing here. They are building here.

Across those four council areas, the most common family names for new business registrations were Singh, Patel, Kaur, and Sharma. Smith ranked 16th.

The numbers tell the story

Statewide, Indian-born founders accounted for 19 per cent of all NSW business registrations in 2025. That is six times their share of the NSW population, which sits around 3 per cent. India ranked second as a country of birth for NSW business founders, behind only Australia itself.

But when you zoom into Western Sydney, the concentration becomes harder to ignore. Parramatta registered just under 30,000 new businesses in 2025, up 35 per cent on the previous year. Blacktown saw 21,674 new firms, a 48 per cent jump compared with 2024.

Tom Willis, co-founder of Lawpath, called it a clear signal of disproportionate entrepreneurial activity. He is right, though the word that sticks with me is not disproportionate. It is structural.

This is not a one-year blip. This is what happens when a large, skilled migrant population settles in a region with affordable commercial space, growing population density, and enough critical mass to support ethnic economies alongside mainstream ones.

What these businesses actually do

The sectors are a mix. Food and hospitality feature heavily, as you would expect. But so do professional services, web-based services, digital marketing, and construction-related trades.

Pragna Bhavsar and her husband Sahil run Chit Chaat Co, a catering firm based in Westmead near Parramatta. They offer modern Indian fusion cuisine and do 5 to 10 events a week, ranging from 20 to over 100 people. Bhavsar, who is 28, quit her HR job about a year ago to work full-time at the business.

She told the Sydney Morning Herald they chose to locate in Western Sydney to be near the growing South Asian community. It is a smart call. When you have a concentrated customer base and strong community networks, you can build a viable business faster than if you were trying to serve a dispersed market across Sydney.

Bhavsar said the networks within Western Sydney's South Asian community are beneficial for small businesses. It is like you are all growing together, she said.

That line is doing a lot of work. What she is describing is an entrepreneurial ecosystem. You have customers, suppliers, partners, advisers, and informal knowledge-sharing all happening within a relatively tight geographic and cultural network. That is how business clusters form. You see it in Little Italy in the 1970s, in Cabramatta in the 1990s, and now in Parramatta and Blacktown in the 2020s.

Why Western Sydney

More than a third of residents in the suburb of Parramatta and some surrounding neighbourhoods were born in India. The north-west suburbs like Schofields, The Ponds, and Marsden Park have large Indian diaspora populations as well.

Jai Patel, who leads KPMG's India Business Practice, said a high-energy business ecosystem has emerged among the Indian diaspora in Western Sydney. It is driven by deep social connections and entrepreneurial spirit.

He also pointed out that starting a business can be an important pathway for new migrants to become established in Australia. Cracking that first job without Australian experience can be difficult, he said. For many, creating a new business can be a better way to go.

That matches what I have seen in Western Sydney property markets over the past decade. You get migrants arriving with capital, qualifications, and work experience, but they hit a wall when it comes to local employment. So they go into business. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. But the barrier to entry is low enough that people keep trying.

The other factor is affordability. You can still lease commercial space in Blacktown or The Hills at rates that would be impossible in the CBD or the inner west. That matters when you are bootstrapping a business with savings.

The broader entrepreneurial surge

The Indian-born business creation wave is part of a bigger trend. New business registrations have grown strongly across Australia over the past two years.

Willis from Lawpath said a desire to bolster household finances is one likely driver. In a period marked by cost-of-living pressures, elevated interest rates and modest wage growth, many Australians are turning to business activity to create income flexibility, he said.

That feels right. When your mortgage rate has gone from 2.5 per cent to 6 per cent in two years and your salary has not kept pace with inflation, starting a side business starts to look less like a risk and more like a necessity.

But the Indian-born founder data suggests something additional is happening. This is not just about financial pressure. It is about a specific community with high rates of tertiary education, strong internal networks, and a cultural disposition toward entrepreneurship finding the right conditions to build at scale.

What it means for the region

Western Sydney has spent decades being treated as Sydney's back office. The place where people commute from, not to. The place where property was cheap because nothing else was happening.

That narrative has been outdated for a while now, but the business registration data makes it impossible to ignore. Parramatta, Blacktown, The Hills, and Penrith are not just residential overflow zones. They are entrepreneurial centres.

The Indian-born business wave is also facilitating growing trade and investment links between Western Sydney and India, which is Asia's third-biggest economy. The diaspora provides a human bridge into the vast Indian market across sectors, Patel said.

If you own a business in Western Sydney, you are operating in a more competitive environment than you were five years ago. But you are also operating in a more dynamic one, with better access to suppliers, services, and talent.

If you are a property investor or developer, the implications are straightforward. Commercial and mixed-use property in these areas is underpriced relative to the economic activity being generated. That gap will close.

And if you are a policymaker, the lesson is that migration-driven entrepreneurship is not a side effect. It is a core economic driver for the region. Anything that makes it harder for skilled migrants to start businesses here is bad policy.

Where this goes

Australia's Indian-origin community now numbers about 1 million people. That population has grown rapidly over the past 20 years, and it is not slowing down.

Western Sydney is the centre of gravity for that community in NSW. And as the Lawpath data shows, that community is not just settling. They are building infrastructure, creating jobs, and generating wealth.

The business registration numbers from 2025 are a snapshot of that process in motion. Singh beating Smith in the business name rankings is not a novelty stat. It is a reflection of where economic power is shifting.

Western Sydney has always had potential. Now it has momentum. And a lot of that momentum is coming from people who arrived here in the last decade, saw an opportunity, and got to work.