

She got her first break accidentally when Chandrakant Bhosle, a family friend and an assistant to Shankar–Jaikishan recommended her name to Shankar. She sang the hit "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" when she was just nine. She has a son Nishadh Chandra who is a music composer. In an interaction with a YouTube channel, she has admitted to “almost giving up on her career for family”. She lost her father on 12 April 1971 when she was barely 11 years old. He was from Kathmandu, Nepal before settling in Kolkata and eventually in Mumbai. Her father was music composer Bholanath Shrestha, who worked primarily with Hindi film music directors. Hailing from the Nepali Newar community, Poornima was born in Mumbai. Apart from films, she has sung numerous non-film songs in various genres like Baal Geet (children's songs), Bhavgeet, Bhajan, Ghazal, Chutney and Indipop. Īpart from Hindi songs, Poornima has sung in many languages including Bengali, Nepali, Marathi, Bhojpuri, Punjabi, Gujarati, Oriya, Rajasthani, Assamese, Haryanvi, Garhwali and Arabic. Vishwanathan, Ravindra Jain, Anu Malik, Jatin–Lalit, Raamlaxman, Nadeem-Shravan, M.M.Kreem, Viju Shah, Anand Raj Anand, Nikhil-Vinay, Vishal–Shekhar and Aadesh Shrivastava. She has also collaborated with many music directors in her four decades long singing career including Bappi Lahiri, Rajesh Roshan, M. Their collaboration throughout the 1990s gave her a string of hits. She made a comeback as an adult singer when music director duo Anand–Milind collaborated with her for the superhit song "Tu Tu Tara" in Bol Radha Bol (1992). Burman with such popular numbers, "Tera Mujhse Hai Pehle" from Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1973) and "Kya Hua Tera Vada" from Hum Kisise Kum Naheen (1977) both earned her nominations for the Filmfare Best Female Playback Award becoming the youngest nominee in the category at the age of 11. Poornima formed a successful collaboration with R.D. Burman, Kalyanji-Anandji and Laxmikant–Pyarelal.

Ramchandra, Salil Choudhury, Anil Biswas, S.D. Throughout her childhood, she then worked with music composers of the golden era including Naushad, Madan Mohan, C. She started her career as a child singer in Andaz (1971) under music director duo Shankar Jaikishan for the hit song "Hai Na Bolo Bolo" alongside Mohammed Rafi and Suman Kalyanpur.

Starting as a child singer, she later reinvented into a leading playback singer in Bollywood during the 1990s.

Poornima Shrestha (born 6 September 1960 as Sushma Shrestha), is an Indian playback singer.
