Aanand L Rai is a filmmaker and younger brother of television director Ravi Rai. He did his schooling in Delhi and pursued a computer engineering course from Aurangabad in Maharashtra. After working as an engineer for a while, Rai followed his passion and began to work in the entertainment industry. He initially assisted his brother on television shows and then started directing some shows himself.

In 2007, Aanand Rai made his movie directorial debut with the Hindi film Strangers starring Jimmy Sheirgill, Kay Kay Menon, Nandana Sen and Sonali Kulkarni. The movie was an adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers On A Train (1951). Next, he directed Thodi Life Thoda Magic (2008), starring Jackie Shroff and Parmeet Sethi.

Rai entered the big league with the success of his third film, the romantic drama Tanu Weds Manu (2011) starring R Madhavan, Kangana Ranaut and Jimmy Sheirgill. His next was Raanjhanaa (2013) starring Dhanush, Abhay Deol and Sonam Kapoor.

In 2015, he directed Tanu Weds Manu: Returns, the sequel to the 2011 hit, which became a blockbuster.

Rai has founded a motion picture production company, Colour Yellow Productions. The banner has produced the Tanu Weds Manu franchise, the Happy Bhag Jayegi franchise, Raanjhanaa, Nil Battey Sannata (2016), Shubh Mangal Saavdhan (2017), Mukkabaaz (2018), Meri Nimmo (2018), Manmarziyaan (2018), the historical period fantasy horror film Tumbbad (2018), a Malayalam-Hindi bilingual adventure drama Moothon (2018), and the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Zero (2018), which he has also directed.