Washington, May 2 (IANS) Owning nearly a fifth of 1.5 million non-farm US businesses owned by Asians operating the US in 2007, Indians raked in over $150 billion in revenue, according to a new survey.

With their number going up by over 40.4 percent since 2002, these Asian-owned firms accounted for 5.7 percent of all nonfarm businesses in the US, employed 2.8 million persons (2.4 percent of total employment) and generated $507.6 billion in receipts (1.7 percent of total receipts).

Of them Asian Indians owned 308,514 firms (19.9 percent of all Asian-owned firms), with receipts of $152.5 billion (30.0 percent of all Asian-owned firm receipts), according to the US Census Bureau's 2007 Survey of Business Owners (SBO), released last week.

Asian- Indian owned businesses recorded a growth of 38.2 percent.

Among Asian Indian-owned US firms, 48.9 percent were in the professional, scientific, and technical services; the retail trade sector; and the health care and social assistance sector.

Asian Indian-owned US firms accounted for 1.7 percent of all US businesses in these sectors. Retail trade, wholesale trade, and professional, scientific, and technical services accounted for 59.1 percent of Asian Indian-owned business revenue.

California had the largest number of Asian Indian-owned firms at 58,995 (19.1 percent of all Asian Indian-owned firms), with receipts of $29.1 billion (19.1 percent of all Asian Indian-owned firm receipts).

New York and Texas were next with 47,760 (15.5 percent) and 27,748 (9.0 percent) Asian Indian-owned firms respectively, with receipts of $17.2 billion (11.3 percent) and $14.0 billion (9.2 percent) respectively.

Among US counties, Los Angeles County, California, and Queens County, New York, had the largest numbers of Asian Indian-owned firms in 2007 at 16,730 and 16,324 respectively.

The metropolitan statistical areas with the largest number of Asian Indian-owned firms were New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania (64,457); Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, California (23,151); and Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, Illinois-Indiana-Wisconsin (17,362).

"Asian-owned businesses continued to be one of the strongest segments of our nation's economy, bringing in more than half a trillion dollars in sales in 2007 and employing more than 2.8 million people," said Census Bureau Deputy Director Thomas Mesenbourg.

Among all Asian-owned businesses, Asian Chinese-owned businesses accounted for 27.3 percent; Filipino, 10.5 percent; Japanese, 7.0 percent; Korean, 12.4 percent; Vietnamese, 14.8 percent; and other Asian, 9.9 percent.