Gautam S. Mengle has been a journalist on the crime beat for 12 years and counting, and has worked across newspapers during this time. He joined The Asian Age as a trainee reporter in September 2008, and within two months was thrown into the biggest story of the year - the 26/11 terror attacks, an experience which went a long way in shaping him as a crime reporter. It was also during his four-year stint with The Asian Age that he worked under S. Hussain Zaidi, who was then the Resident Editor, and went on to assist him on some of his books in a minor capacity. From The Asian Age, he moved on to The Indian Express in 2012 and then to The Hindu in 2015 to be part of the pilot team for its Mumbai edition. He is currently the Executive Editor of CySpy India, a news website that aims to simplify and report cybercrime and cybersecurity for the lay reader.
Fiction writing has been a hobby since his teenage years, and some of his short stories were published in Voices, the campus newspaper of the Somaiya College, where he studied journalism, and one of his short stories was also made into a short film, which won an award at an inter-college film festival. Gautam went on to serve as Managing Editor of Voices for a year.
Gautam took up stand up comedy as a hobby in August 2018 and has performed at enough open mics to be able to identify as at least a part-time, if not struggling, stand up comic.