He graduated from Christ's College, Cambridge, with a first-class degree in English Language and Literature in 1998.

[3] Before becoming a writer, Sanghera worked at a burger chain, a hospital laundry, a market research firm, a sewing factory and a literacy project in New York.

[3] As a student, he worked at the Express and Star in Wolverhampton and dressed up as a "news bunny" for L!VE TV.

[2] His novel Marriage Material, originally published in 2013, was inspired in part by Arnold Bennett's The Old Wives' Tale.

[8][9] In November 2021, his Channel 4 documentary series about race, Empire State of Mind, received a four-star review in The Guardian from Chitra Ramaswamy.