Vasant Damodar Bhate  (1939-1975)
Recollecting histories of Pune’s Engineers and Builders




Vasant Damodar Bhate graduated from the College of Engineering Poona in 1959. His father had been an Executive Engineer in the Public Works Department and the family lived in Godra, Patan, Kolhapur and Pune. All of Vasant Bhate’s brothers studied engineering. Upon graduation, Vasant Bhate worked for two years with Spartan Builders, the Pune firm of contractor and developer Natubhai Sangvi.

In 1961, Vasant Bhate started on his own as a contractor. Two years later he partnered with a distant family relation and engineer from Dhule, Sadanand Anant Kelkar, to form Bhate & Kelkar. Their first contracting job, in 1963, was to build the Pune Local Center of the Institution of Engineers (India). Bhate & Kelkar also constructed buildings for Kirloskar Pneumatics and the Market Yard and worked on buildings designed by architect V.V. Badawe and engineer P.V. Sant. In 1968 they were approached by a Cooperative Housing Society formed by the employees of the Bank of Maharashtra to identify a plot and build apartments for them.

One year later, Bhate & Kelkar ventured into real estate development by commissioning the design of Madhuban Apartments on land that previously belonged to the Nizam of Hyderabad. They built and sold the flats on paper. This was a big success and they became one of the most important builders selling so-called “Ownership Flats” in the area of Prabhat road and Deccan Gymkhana. They named their flats Madhuban, Anantban, Ashokban, Mayurban, Chandanban, Kanchanban, Pramodban, Madhuban, Sundarban, Shantiban etc.

Bhate & Kelkar employed several site engineers and one accountant. They formed a team with Mr. Sharma and Mr. Ghotge of the firm Architects United for the design of these flats and Kanitkar & Kulkarni as structural consultants. When Vasant Bhate unexpectedly expired, his wife, Ms. Hemalata Vasant Bhate, successfully steered the ongoing projects through completion. Today, the third and fourth generation of the Bhate family are active in Pune’s building industry.

Image Courtesy: Bhate family, Sarah Melsens, Siddhant Jadhav, Suhas Jadhav, Pune Architectural History Archive (PAHA) – Architects United Collection.