Dr. Phatak obtained his Bachelor’s degree in EE from SGSITS Indore and his M Tech and Ph D from IIT Bombay.He served with IIT Bombay from 1971 till he retired in 2018. He headed the CSE department from 1991 to 1994. He was Dean of Resources from 1995 to 1998, was the founding head of Kanwal Rekhi School of IT from 1998 to 2002, and headed the SJ Mehta School of Management from 2004 to 2005. He held the Subrao M Nilekani Chair Professorship from 2000 to 2013.
Presently, he is a Professor Emeritus of IIT Bombay.He started an IT incubator at IIT Bombay in 1999, to foster innovation and start-upculture. It has now evolved into SINE (Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship),considered as one of the best incubators in India. He started the country’s firstinteractive distance learning program, initially using VSATs and later through internetIt has blossomed into the Centre for Distance Engineering Education (CDEEP). He set up the Affordable Solutions Lab (ASL) at IIT Bombay in 2000. He is regarded as the pioneer of smart card usage in financial transactions in India. He developed low-cost
devices such as Smart Card Reader, Clickers and Thin-clients. He successfully completed the Aakash project for affordable tablets. He is an Open-Source evangelist, and strives to popularize Free and Open-Source Software and Content.
In 1984-85, Prof. Phatak helped setting up the department of Computer Science in his Alma Mater SGSITS and later in Indore University. During a sabbatical leave in 2003, he visited over 50 smaller engineering colleges in the country and interacted with thousands of teachers and students. He mentored this talent pool through initiatives like the Ekalavya Project, T10KT (Train 10 thousand Teachers at a time), MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and blended MOOCs, etc. His focus is on improving quality of education at scale. He is currently involved in project DEEP-Shaala in Amreli to spread digitally empowered education among selected students of village schools.
He has a long association with CSI. He was elected Fellow of CSI in 1999, and Fellow of IETE in 2000. As an expert in Databases and Information systems, he has been a consultant and advisor to a number of organizations and ministries on issues related to IT. In the financial sector, he has been an IT advisor to SBI, RBI, UTI, IDBI, LIC, New India, UIIC, SEBI, NSDL, etc. He is a permanent invitee to the payment system Board of RBI. He chairs the Technical Advisory Committee of SEBI. He has served on the boards of several companies and institutions, including IDBI bank, UTIISL, IDBIISL, Bank of Baroda, HDFCAMC, ReBIT, Persistent Systems, NIA, IGNOU, IIT Gandhinagar. He chaired the Boards of NIT Agartala, IIT Indore, and Baroda Sun Technologies. He currently serves on the boards of, MKCL, IBPS, and SGSITS. He chaired technical committees on MCA21, GSTN, GEM, and the review committee for Aadhar system security assessment. He was AICTE Distinguished chair Professor. Prof. Phatak is recipient of the ‘Excellence in Teaching’ award and the ‘Industrial Impact Research Award’ from IIT Bombay. He was conferred Life Time Achievement Awards by Skoch foundation in 2003, by Data Quest in 2008, by Dewang Mehta Business School Awards in 2010, by Interop in 2014, by IIT Bombay in 2014 and by CSI in 2018. He was listed among fifty most influential Indians, by Business week in 2009. The President of India honoured him with Padma Shri in 2013.
Dr. Phatak believes that teaching cannot be just a profession, but has to be one’s Dharma. His dream is to see a resurgent India, catching up with the world using IT as a spring-board.