A novel severe plastic deformation (SPD) route to achieve strengthening of AA 6061 alloy sheets by subjecting them to constrained groove pressing (CGP) followed by cold rolling (CR) is studied in the present work. Solutionized AA 6061 alloy sheets of 3 mm thickness have been subjected to CGP with an equivalent plastic strain of 1.16. The CGP samples have been subsequently cold rolled to reduce the thickness to 1mm (67% reduction) to achieve homogeneous microstructure with ultra-fine grains. It has been observed that yield strength increased significantly due to both CGP and CR. However, the ductility of the processed sample is lower. Therefore, an attempt has been made to study the aging behavior of the processed sample to achieve higher strength along with enhanced ductility through precipitation hardening. Aging of the processed samples was done by isothermal treatment at different temperatures. The microstructure of the deformed and aged samples was characterized by optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Hardness and tensile tests have been studied to understand the mechanical behavior of deformed and aged samples. From the results, it has been found that processing of this alloy through CGP+CR and subsequent aging improves both strength and ductility due to the combined effect of precipitation hardening and recovery. © Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.