On a Saturday morning in north Round Rock, the parking lot at Naya Bazaar fills with families pushing carts stacked with bitter gourd, fresh curry leaves and twenty-pound sacks of basmati. A few miles south, the smell of frying dosa batter drifts from a strip mall on Old Settlers Boulevard. The Indians in Round Rock did not arrive with a grand plan. They followed the work, the schools and one another, and over thirty years they built a quiet centre of South Asian life in the hills north of Austin.
The Place
Round Rock sits about fifteen miles north of downtown Austin, in Williamson County, where the Chisholm Trail once crossed Brushy Creek at a flat, anvil-shaped stone. Settlers named the town for that rock in the 1850s, and it incorporated in 1913 as a small farming and railroad community.
For most of the twentieth century it was a sleepy place. Then in 1996 Dell relocated its headquarters here, and the town’s fortunes changed almost overnight.
Today Round Rock is home to roughly 120,000 people, a prosperous and fast-growing suburb anchored by technology, good public schools and steady jobs. It is the kind of place families move to and stay.
How It Became Indian
The Indian presence in Round Rock is recent, measured in decades rather than generations. It tracks almost exactly with the rise of the technology economy that Dell set in motion.
Dell and the first arrivals
When Dell moved its headquarters to Round Rock in 1996, it brought thousands of engineering and operations jobs to a town that had been mostly farmland and bedroom subdivisions. The company remains the city’s largest employer, with around 12,000 people on its Round Rock campus.
Among the early hires were Indian engineers, many on H-1B visas, who had trained in computer science and electronics at universities in India and arrived through the booming American tech industry of the late 1990s. They settled near work, in the new master-planned neighbourhoods going up across Williamson County.
These first families were small in number and largely invisible to the wider town. They drove into north Austin for groceries and worship, because Round Rock itself had almost nothing for them yet.
The Austin tech boom
The real growth came after 2010. Austin became one of the most magnetic technology metros in the country, drawing corporate relocations, semiconductor plants and start-ups. The talent those companies wanted was precisely the talent the H-1B programme was built to import, and a large share of it came from India.
Asian Indians are now the single largest Asian group in the Austin metro, around 37.8 per cent of the area’s Asian population and roughly 30,000 people. About 36 per cent of all Asian immigrants moving to the region come from India. The Austin area’s Asian population grew by nearly 96 per cent in a single decade, among the fastest of any major American metro.
Williamson County absorbed much of that growth. The county expanded by 44.1 per cent between 2010 and 2020, fourth-fastest in the nation, and Round Rock was at its heart. Indian families chose it for the same reasons everyone else did: newer houses, lower prices than central Austin, and schools with serious reputations. The pattern echoed across the Texas suburbs, from the Indian community in Frisco north of Dallas to the established enclaves in Plano.
The pull of the schools
For Indian parents, the deciding factor was usually education. According to state data compiled by the Texas Tribune, Round Rock Independent School District enrols nearly 47,000 students, and roughly 22 per cent of them are now Asian, a striking figure for a Texas suburb. The district runs Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and gifted programmes that draw exactly the kind of academically ambitious household common among Indian immigrant families.
Word of mouth did the rest. A family that bought near a strong elementary school told relatives and friends back home and at work, and over time particular neighbourhoods filled with Indian families who had chosen the same streets for the same reasons.
From commuters to a community
By the late 2010s the population had reached the point where businesses followed. Indian restaurants opened along the commercial corridors, then grocers, then the festivals. What had been a scattered group of engineers commuting to Austin for everything became a community with its own gravitational pull, increasingly served inside Round Rock itself.
The shift was generational as well as commercial. The engineers who arrived in their twenties were now raising children born in Texas, children who played cricket on weekends and rangoli at Diwali but spoke with Central Texas accents. Grandparents began arriving on long visits, and the temples, classes and grocers that a settled community needs took root to serve them. A migration that had started as individual job offers had become, by the 2020s, a family enterprise spanning three generations.
The Landmarks
Naya Bazaar, 101 Limmer Loop, Suite 300, Round Rock. This sprawling Indian grocer opened in January 2025 in the Limmer Loop Retail Center, a sign of how far the community had grown. It stocks fresh produce, frozen staples and ready-to-cook meals, with a meat market offering halal poultry, and on weekends it draws families from across the north metro.
Dwaraka’s Bawarchi Indian Kitchen, 1400 E. Old Settlers Boulevard, Round Rock. Bawarchi is a temple to biryani, advertising dozens of varieties across vegetarian and meat options. It belongs to a style of Hyderabadi-influenced cooking that has become a fixture of the Telugu-speaking professionals who form a large part of the area’s Indian population.
Tarka Indian Kitchen, Round Rock. A fast-casual brand born in Austin, Tarka brought familiar curries, naan and biryani to the suburb in a quick-service format. Its menu caters to vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free diners, reflecting how thoroughly Indian food has crossed into the mainstream of Central Texas dining.
Rock N Grill, Round Rock. A long-running Indian restaurant and bar serving the Round Rock and north Austin crowd, it has become one of the better-known sit-down options for North and South Indian cooking in the area, popular for weekend family meals and celebrations.
Round Rock Diwali Festival, Centennial Plaza, 301 W. Bagdad Avenue, Round Rock. Held on the lawn outside city hall and now in its eighth year, the free festival has become the community’s biggest annual gathering. It features more than 600 dancers performing Bollywood, classical and folk forms, alongside rangoli, food vendors and a fashion show, with the city itself providing the grounds.
Radha Madhav Dham, 400 Barsana Road, Austin. Tucked into the rolling hills southwest of the city, this 200-acre ashram is the oldest Hindu temple in Texas, built in 1990 and crowned by a 90-foot golden dome. For Round Rock’s Hindu families it is the regional pilgrimage point, the place they drive to for major festivals and life ceremonies.
Hill Country Cricket Association, Round Rock and Austin. Cricket is the unofficial sport of the diaspora, and local clubs field weekend matches on grounds across the north metro. For many Indian fathers and sons, a Saturday on the pitch is the closest thing to home, and the league has grown alongside the population.
Where They Came From
The Indians of Round Rock are overwhelmingly a professional migration, drawn from the engineering and software workforce of India rather than from any single village or region.
The largest cohort is from the southern states, especially the Telugu-speaking regions of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, whose Hyderabad technology hub feeds directly into the American tech pipeline. That heritage shows in the biryani-heavy restaurant menus and the prevalence of South Indian vegetarian cooking.
There are also substantial numbers from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and the north Indian states, along with Gujarati families who often run businesses. What unites them is the path: education in India, an H-1B or student visa, a first American job in technology, and eventually a green card and a house with a good school zone.
Round Rock Today
Round Rock’s Indian community has reached the stage where it no longer has to leave town for daily life. Groceries, restaurants, tutoring centres, dance and music classes and worship are increasingly available within the suburb or a short drive away, including the closely linked Indian community in Cedar Park and the north Austin corridor between them.
The community remains young and professional, weighted toward families with school-age children and parents working in technology, healthcare and engineering. It is prosperous, with the higher incomes and education levels typical of the H-1B generation, and it is still growing as new arrivals choose Williamson County for the same reasons their predecessors did.
What is changing is visibility. The Diwali festival on the city hall lawn, the Asian share of the school district, the new grocers opening to serve demand: these are signs of a community that has moved from the margins of the town to a settled, recognised part of it. It is a different chapter of the same American story told by older enclaves like the Mahatma Gandhi District in Houston and the storied Indian community in Edison, New Jersey, written this time in the suburbs of Central Texas. The Indians in Round Rock are no longer commuters passing through. They are residents who have made the place their own.
Frequently Asked Questions
How large is the Indian community in Round Rock, Texas?
Round Rock’s Asian population is around 8 per cent of the city, having grown from under 3 per cent in 2000, and Indians are the largest Asian group. Across the wider Austin metro there are roughly 30,000 Asian Indian residents, with Williamson County and Round Rock absorbing much of the recent growth.
Why did so many Indians move to Round Rock?
The Indians in Round Rock came largely for technology jobs and schools. Dell’s headquarters and the broader Austin tech boom drew Indian engineers on H-1B visas, and Round Rock ISD’s strong academic programmes made the suburb especially attractive to families.
Where do Indian families in Round Rock worship?
Many Hindu families travel to Radha Madhav Dham, a 200-acre ashram southwest of Austin that is the oldest Hindu temple in Texas. There are additional temples and worship centres across the Austin metro that serve Round Rock’s South Asian residents.
Where can I find Indian groceries and food in Round Rock?
Naya Bazaar on Limmer Loop is a large Indian grocer that opened in 2025, and restaurants such as Dwaraka’s Bawarchi, Tarka Indian Kitchen and Rock N Grill serve North and South Indian cuisine. More options sit along the north Austin corridor toward Cedar Park.
What is the Round Rock Diwali Festival?
It is a free annual festival of lights held at Centennial Plaza outside city hall, now in its eighth year. It features more than 600 performers, rangoli, food stalls and a fashion show, and is the largest public celebration of the Indian community in Round Rock.
Which parts of India do Round Rock’s Indian residents come from?
Most are professionals from across India, with a large contingent from the Telugu-speaking regions of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, plus families from Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, the north Indian states and Gujarat. The common thread is the technology-driven migration of the past three decades.
If your family’s story passed through Round Rock, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a university classroom in Hyderabad to a school-zone cul-de-sac off Old Settlers Boulevard, to wherever you are now.