An art dealer and curator, Sharan Apparao is the founder and current director of Apparao Galleries, Chennai and New Delhi, and curates events and exhibitions for Apparao as well as other galleries in India and abroad.

Born in Madras (now Chennai), Apparao obtained a Bachelor's degree in art history from Stella Maris College, Madras (1982). Spurred by the success of her first major exhibition (1983), which comprised Chinese paintings, she opened an art gallery, called The Gallery, in Chennai in 1984. In 1985 and 1986, she participated in two summer internships at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC. She also began working as a consultant for Grindlays Bank (later, ANZ Grindlays Bank) in 1986, commissioning artworks and helping organise art exhibitions and events.

During the early years of her gallery, later renamed Apparao Galleries, she showed the works of Indian Modernists such as MF Husain and Sunil Das. In the early 1990s, Apparao raised funds for Colours of Absence (1993), a film on Jehangir Sabavala by filmmaker Arun Khopkar by holding exhibitions to sell Sabavala’s work. Among other artists whose works she has dealt in include Sunil Das, Laxma Goud and Anjolie Ela Menon. She also curated a large-scale retrospective of SH Raza at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai (2002).

She founded Apparao Art Auctions in 2006 as well as the international e-commerce platform Art Route. Her most recent project is The Art Platform (TAP) — a non-commercial online venue for art exhibitions by Indian galleries, which she initiated in 2020 with the aim of promoting art sales in India during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2007, Apparao was named one of the top women achievers in India by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI).

At the time of writing, she lives between Chennai, New Delhi and Mumbai.