After Gaikwad's graduate studies at the Wilson College, Mumbai,[3] he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in honours (special)[2] by the Bombay University.
For ministerial formation, Gaikwad enrolled at the Leonard Theological College, Jabalpur, a Seminary where the Old Testament Scholar Wolfgang Roth once taught, affiliated to the nation's first University[6] as a Methodist student from where he obtained a Bachelor of Divinity degree awarded by the Senate of Serampore College (University) after his three-year course from 1974-1977.
During the penultimate year of his study, Gaikwad moved to Bangalore and pursued a one-year special course at the United Theological College, Bangalore in 1981,[8] then under the Principalship of Joshua Russell Chandran, where he worked on his dissertation entitled Karma and Transmigration in Modern Hinduism: An evaluation of the interpretation of the concepts of the thought of M. K. Gandhi, Aurobindo and S.
[citation needed] Gaikwad was Chairperson of the World Student Christian Federation, Asia Pacific Region[21] from 2005 through 2008.
[1] As General Secretary of the National Council of Churches in India, Gaikwad is ex officio member of the following ecclesiastical organisations,