Sunanda made her debut in 1984 under the baton of Thiru Ilaiyaraja in AVM's film Pudumai Penn which was directed by Thiru Bharati Raja. She has recorded solos and duets with K.J. Yesudas, P. Jayachandran, S.P. Balasubramaniam, S. Janaki and other leading singers. She has worked with music directors such as Ilaiyaraja, M.S. Viswanathan, Salil Chowdhury, A.R. Rahman, Deva, S.A. Rajkumar and L. Vaidyanathan.
She has sung more than 300 songs in Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada and Oriya. She has also sung in several devotional and light music cassettes of HMV, Music Today, Sangeetha, Tharangini, Magnasound Indu, Ananda, Tips, Leo, and Venus etc. She sang a two-volume Sanskrit language devotional cassette composed by Smt. Shyamala Bhave. This was released in June 2003. She has, under the aegis of Music Today, released a collection of Sanskrit slokas set to Carnatic tunes called "Nitya Prarthana", which has been well received.
She regularly broadcasts over Doordarshan and AIR.
She has also been performing regularly in the music festival (Isai Vizha) in Chennai for the past fifteen years, and a sample of the concerts is available in this page.