The influence of difference in thickness, material properties and the weld zone on deep drawing and stretch forming behavior of tailor welded blanks is a critical laboratory scale study before implementation in car body design. Mostly, various low-carbon steel sheets are used for fabrication of tailor welded blanks due to their excellent weldability and formability, and these steel sheets have high normal and planar anisotropy from preprocessing stage due to large deformation cold rolling. In this study, two different tailor welded blanks and one laser welded blank of similar material combination were fabricated by laser welding of interstitial-free, interstitial-free high-strength and high-strength low-alloy steels. Transverse tensile testing of the laser welded blanks of similar material combination (interstitial free–interstitial free) and two tailor welded blank specimens (interstitial free–interstitial free high strength and interstitial free–high strength low alloy) were conducted to evaluate the weld quality in terms of strength and failure location. The effect of anisotropy on formability of tailor welded blanks was investigated in terms of cup depth and fracture location in cylindrical deep drawing process. Finite element simulations of the deep drawing process were conducted using the commercial available nonlinear solver, RADIOSS. It was observed that the Lankford anisotropy parameter, R-value, influences the thickness distribution, weldline movement and failure location in tailor welded blanks.