At the tender age of nine, she got an opportunity to record a Tagore song in Bengali with the legendary Lata Mangeshkar under the auspices of the music composer and singer Hemant Kumar. Although the young Sharada was aspiring to be working with Indian Foreign Services, Kavita moved to Bombay when she was just 14 to try her luck as a playback singer in the Hindi film industry. She is an alumnus of St. Xaviers' College, Bombay from where she acquired her Ph.D. in Economics. She was also very active in the St. Xaviers' Music Group during her college days. During the annual college festival (Malhar), she accidentally bumped into Ms. Ranu Mukherjee, the daughter of Hemant Kumar. Ranu took the initiative of reintroducing the Kavita to her father. As expected, he was highly impressed by her grounding in music, so he began using her talent as a singer during his live performances. In one such performance, playback singer Manna Dey spotted her talent and employed her to sing advertisement jingles. Through her aunt's strong contacts, she met Mrs. Jaya Chakravarthy, the mother of actress Hema Malini, who later took the initiative of introducing Kavita to the music director Laxmikant (one half of the Laxmikant-Pyarelal fame) in late 1976.

Laxmikant gave her an option to work as a dubbing artiste or a career in playback singing later. Kavita chose the former and impressed Laxmikant with her strong grounding in Indian classical music and her deep voice along with her soulful timbre. Initially, she used to record songs and cut demos of songs intended for singers like Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle. In her struggle phase, she received the patronage of music composers Laxmikant—Pyarelal, who backed her so strongly that she was labelled as a "LP-campwalli" which gave many music directors an excuse to avoid working with her.

In 1980, she first sang the song, "Kaahe Ko Byaahi" in the film Maang Bharo Sajna, which featured her singing talent in her own voice. Unfortunately, the song was dropped from the final cut of the film. In 1985, her career took off with her first major hit, "Tumse Milkar Na Jaane Kyon" from the Hindi film Pyaar Jhukta Nahin. Post the success of the song, it opened up various opportunities beyond the Laxmikant-Pyarelal camp. However, "Hawa Hawaii" and "Karte Hain Hum Pyaar Mr. India Se", two extremely popular songs from the equally popular movie Mr. India (1987), proved to be a turning point in her career. (The songs were composed by music composers Laxmikant-Pyarelal, the latter being a duet with Kishore Kumar and lip-synced on screen by actress Sridevi). Her collaboration with Laxmikant-Pyarelal produced several hits.

The 1990s thrust Kavita to being known as the undisputed leading female playback singer. In 1994, Kavita had the rare honour to be the only female singer after Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle to sing for the institution himself R.D. Burman. Her performance as a singer in the film 1942: A Love Story, composed by R.D. Burman won her a lot of popular acclaim. She went onto work with the best music directors of Hindi films of the 1990s, such as A.R. Rahman, Ismail Darbar, Nadeem-Shravan,Jatin-Lalit, Anu Malik etc. During her stint as a playback singer, she sang duets with the leading male singers of her times like Kumar Sanu, Abhijeet Bhattacharya, Udit Narayan, Mohd. Aziz and Shabbir Kumar.

Post her marriage to violin maestro Dr. L. Subramaniam in Bangalore on November 11 1999, Kavita got extremely selective and cut down on her film singing. She started exploring her talent and expanded her artistic range to areas which were never explored. She was the main featured soloist in the "Global Fusion" album released by Warner Bros., featuring musicians from all the five continents. As she actively started exploring her talent in fusion music, Kavita's exemplary voice took her all around the world including to the US, UK, Europe, Africa, Australia, The Far East, The Middle East and South America. She performed in some of the most prestigious concert halls in the world including the Royal Albert Hall in London, The Kennedy Centre in Washington D.C., Madison Square Gardens, The Lincoln Centre in New York, the Zhongshan Music Hall in Beijing, The Esplanade in Singapore, The Putra Jaya World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur, Gewandhaus Leipzigm among others.

Although primarily a playback singer, Kavita has explored her talent and sung with orchestras as a soloist, she collaborated with Western artists from Jazz, Pop and Classical fields. She has lent her voice for ghazals and devotional music albums. Both as a fusion music singer and as a playback singer, Kavita has performed in every nook and corner of India.