[njpatel]

In banking/government terms, yes, but in general terms NRI is used much wider to describe a person of Indian origin. At least in West India.

[psergeant]

Does “Desi” work in this case? Is it offensive for a white guy to say?

[calvinbhai]

Desi is not offensive or derogatory.

I fact, in the US it seems to be used to refer to anyone from the subcontinent, not just from India.

Desi is probably a better term, since NROs, PIOs and non Indian brown Asians are usually target audience for such content :)

[r_singh]

Would depend on context, but for the most part it's not at all offensive. In my experience Indians in Silicon Valley refer to "indian things / culture" as Desi all the time.

[r_singh]

It might be interesting to know that the Sanskrit word "desi" itself just means country

[psergeant]

Many words starting with n and with gs in them are just color descriptions. Shortened versions of Japanese and Pakistani are offensive in some countries but not others. The Thai word for Indian is “visitor” as in “not from here, will go home soon”. Plenty of words with innocuous meanings pick up offensive meanings.