Kavita Krishnamurthy

She was born as Sharada into a Tamil family in New Delhi to T. S. Krishnamurthy, an employee of the Education Ministry. She began her musical training at the insistence of her aunt Protima Bhattacharya who enrolled her to train under guru Surama Basu, who taught her Rabindra Sangeet. She began her formal training in Hindustani classical music under the guidance of Balram Puri, a classical singer. At the age of eight, Kavita won a gold medal at a music competition. She won several medals participating in the Inter-Ministry Classical Competition in New Delhi in the mid-1960s.During her college days at St. Xavier College, Mumbai, she got an opportunity to record a song in the Bengali film Shriman Prithviraj in 1971 with Lata Mangeshkar as co-singer under the auspices of the music composer and singer Hemant Kumar. Although the young Sharada aspired to work in Indian Foreign Services, she moved to Bombay when she was 14 to try her luck as a playback singer in the Hindi film industry.

She is an alumnus of St. Xavier's College, Bombay from where she did her BA Honors Economics. She was very active in St. Xavier's music group. During the annual college festival (Malhar), she met Ranu Mukherjee, the daughter of Hemant Kumar. Ranu took the initiative of reintroducing Kavita to her father, who began using her as a singer during his live performances. At one such performance, playback singer Manna Dey spotted her and employed her to sing advertisement jingles. Through her aunt's contacts, she met Jaya Chakravarthy, the mother of actress Hema Malini, who later introduced Kavita to the music director Laxmikant (one of the composer duo Laxmikant–Pyarelal) in late 1976. A recent interview covers a pretty good summary of her musical journey.