The Indian National Science Academy awarded Kulkarni the Young Scientist Medal in 1981, making him the first chemical engineer to receive the honor. He received another award in 1981, the Amar Dye Chem Award of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers; IIChE would honor him again in 1988 with the Herdillia Award for Excellence in Basic Research in Chemical Engineering. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, one of the highest Indian science awards the same year. The National Chemical Laboratory selected him s the Best Scientist of the Year in 1992 and the year 2000 brought him two awards, ChemTech-CEW Award of the ChemTech Foundation and the FICCI Award of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry.
Kulkarni, a CSIR Distinguished Scientist at NCL, was elected as a fellow by Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in 1988, the same year as he became a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. He received the elected fellowship of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and the Golden Jubilee Fellowship of the Institute of Chemical Technology (then known as the University Department of Chemical Technology-UDCT) in 1989. The Indian National Science Academy elected him as a fellow in 1990 and The World Academy of Sciences chose him as an elected fellow in 2002. When the Science and Engineering Research Board of the Department of Science and Technology selected scientists for the J. C. Bose National Fellowship in 2009, he was also included in the list of recipients. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, the official journal of the American Chemical Society, issued a festschrift on him in 2009 titled Kulkarni Issue with the guest editorial written by his mentor, L. K. Doraiswmy and the issue featured his biosketch jointly written by Ganapati D. Yadav, V. K. Jayaraman and V. Ravikumar, all known chemical engineers.