Currently he is serving as the Chairman of Vijnana Bharati, a non profit organization of Indian scientists.

Bhatkar was born in Muramba, Taluka Murtijapur, District Akola in a maharashtrian family Maharashtra, India.

Based on the PARAM series of supercomputers, he built the National Param Supercomputing Facility (NPSF) which is now made available as a grid computing facility through the Garuda grid on the National Knowledge Network (NKN) providing nationwide access to High Performance Computing (HPC) infrastructure.

Bhatkar has played a significant role in forming several national institutions and research centers including Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), the Electronics Research and Development Centre (ER&DC) in Thiruvananthapuram,[9] Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K), the ETH Research Laboratory and International Institute of Information Technology (I2IT) in Pune, Maharashtra Knowledge Corporation (MKCL) and the India International Multiversity.

Bhatkar has authored and edited over 12 books and 80 technical and research papers and addressed several university convocations, international and national conferences and conventions and public functions.