Vijay Anand was born in Gurdaspur, Punjab, India, the son of Pishori Lal Anand, a successful and affluent advocate. He was the youngest of nine siblings. The producer and director Chetan Anand and the celebrated actor Dev Anand were his brothers, and among his sister was Sheel Kanta Kapur, mother of film director Shekhar Kapur. Vijay married his much younger niece, Sushma Kohli, the daughter of his older sister.This uncle-niece pairing is forbidden in much of Indian society and was a scandal when it happened. The couple married in the face of resistance from many quarters, not least their own families, but they had a happy marriage which lasted all their lives. Sankeshwar previously owned Karnataka's largest circulating newspaper, Vijaya Karnataka, until it was sold to Bennett, Coleman and Co. Ltd. (The Times Group) for an undisclosed sum in 2007. After the expiry of a five-year non-compete clause he launched Vijaya Vani in 2012. Vijaya Vani is now the #1 Kannada daily newspaper, with 8 lakh+ sold copies every day. Sankeshwar launched a new Kannada channel, Digvijay 24X7, on April 4, 2017. In 2020, the Government of India honoured him with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian award in the Republic of India.In 2022, Anand Sankeshwar produced the biopic of Vijay Sankeshwar as Vijayanand and released the teaser. The biopic will focus on Sankeshwar’s journey from owning a single truck to making it India’s largest logistics fleet.