Her father, Pandharinath Kolhapure, is a classical singer whose family was from Kolhapur. She is niece of singers Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, as her mother is the sister of Deenanath Mangeshkar, father of Lata and Asha. Her mother was a Saraswat Brahmin, whose family hailed from Mangalore.
She started her career as a ramp model and went about doing more than 200 fashion shows in a career spanning over 15 years with top designers, such as Rohit Bal, Rina Dhaka, Tarun Tahiliani, JJ Vallaya, Hemant Trevedi, and Manish Malhotra. Besides doing fashion shows, Tejaswini has worked in ads for "Vimal Sarees", "HMT Watches", and "Sony Television". Before she started her career with modelling and films, she made her debut with a television series, Mujhe Chaand Chahiye, directed by Satish Kaushik on Zee television She also worked in "Saughat" and "Tum Bin", episodes of the Rishtey mini-series on Zee television "Modh" during the "Prithvi Festival " directed by Ahlam Khan.
