Anup Bhandari was born on March 2, 1982 in Puttur, Karnataka. He is married to Neetha Shetty, who works as a costume designer for all his films.

Anup Bhandari is an Indian film director, composer and lyricist who works primarily in Kannada cinema. He made his directorial debut with the mystery thriller film Rangitaranga in 2015, featuring his brother Nirup Bhandari. Bhandari was born and brought up in Mysore, where he obtained his bachelor's degree in Information Science. After graduating, he joined Infosys Technologies as a Software Engineer and eventually moved to the USA, where he worked for almost a decade before returning to India to make his debut feature film.

Bhandari started making short films while working for Infosys and won several awards. His short film "WORDS" starring Hollywood actor Russell Harvard paved the way for his debut feature film Rangitaranga, which turned out to be one of the biggest blockbusters. Rangitaranga opened overseas markets for Kannada films and became the first Kannada film to release in many countries, appear on the New York Box Office Listing, and run for 50 days in the USA.

Bhandari followed up Rangitaranga with Rajaratha in 2018 and the blockbuster mystery thriller Vikrant Rona in 2022, which was appreciated for its high standards of making, performances and technical brilliance.