Maini was born in
Ludhiana,
Punjab,
British India, to
Sir Amar Maini, a Kenyan-born lawyer and Ugandan politician, and his wife, Sam Saheli Mehra. His younger brother is academic Yoginder Nath Tidu Maini. Ravinder completed his bachelor's degree at
Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. In the 1980s, Maini,
Marc Feldmann and
Fionula Brennan identified
TNF alpha as a key
cytokine in the process of
rheumatoid arthritis. ==Honours and awards==