 For her education, Rao went to Little Flower School and Loyola School, Jamshedpur, where she was part of the choir group in school.In 1997, she visited to Mumbai along with her family, to do a postgraduate diploma in statistics from the University of Mumbai.Rao was motivated to be a singer upon meeting with Hariharan, at the age of 13, and commenced training under Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan, insisted by Hariharan.