Ranveer Singh was born on 6 July 1985 in Bombay (now Mumbai) to Anju and Jagjit Singh Bhavnani; he has an elder sister, Ritika. His paternal grandmother was the actress Chand Burke, and his mother's cousin Sunita Kapoor is married to actor Anil Kapoor.
He enjoyed school plays and debates, studied at H.R. College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai, and then completed a Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications (with theatre) at Indiana University Bloomington, USA, in 2008. Back in Mumbai he worked as an advertising copywriter at O&M and J. Walter Thompson and briefly as an assistant director, while auditioning for film roles.