Anand Satyanand was born on 22 July 1944 and raised in Auckland to an Indo-Fijian family. His grandparents arrived in Fiji from India in 1911, and his grandfather worked as a government interpreter. His father, Mutyala Satyanand, was born in Sigatoka in 1913 and arrived in New Zealand in 1927 to attend high school and later university. His mother Tara Tillak was from Suva, and trained as a Karitane nurse in New Zealand. She married Mutyala Satyanand in 1940, after moving to New Zealand.