Born December 14, 1979, Basu grew up in Calcutta, where he studied at Don Bosco School, and later Presidency College, Kolkata, where he obtained a degree in Economics. He dropped out of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad and then went on to complete a course in broadcasting and documentary filmmaking at the University of Westminster, London.

The Simoqin Prophecies was written when Basu was 22 and published when he was 23, making him one of India's youngest authors at the time. The Simoqin Prophecies, written in English, has been published in Swedish by Ordbilder, and German (from Piper Verlag). The subsequent volumes in the trilogy, The Manticore's Secret and The Unwaba Revelations were released in 2005 and 2007 respectively. The GameWorld trilogy has been widely well reviewed and all three books have reached Indian bestseller lists but not made a significant impact on international markets.

Basu has contributed to The Harper Collins Anthology of New Indian Writing (2004). Basu has also written short stories for children, which appear in the Puffin Book of Bedtime stories (2005), the Puffin Book of Funny Stories (2005), 'Seven Science Fiction Stories' (Scholastic India, 2006), 'Superhero!' (Scholastic India, 2007), 'Bewitched' (Scholastic India, 2008)

In 2006, Basu published a series of articles and interviews on Indian speculative fiction called The Trousers of Time: Possible futures of Indian speculative fiction in English on a fellowship from Sarai

In 2003, Basu was in Outlook magazine's list of 16 Indian achievers under 25.In 2007, Basu was declared, along with other prominent young Indians such as Rahul Gandhi and Vidya Balan, one of India's most promising 'Emerging Indians' by a survey conducted by IMRB and The Week magazine, India.

Apart from his novel writing, Basu is a columnist, screenwriter, documentary filmmaker and freelance journalist writing on travel, film, books and pop culture. He also runs a weblog.

Basu is also a comics writer. He worked for Virgin Comics and continues to write comics. His initial projects with Virgin Comics were Devi (#3-#10) and The Tall Tales of Vishnu Sharma based on the Panchatantra. Basu announced on his blog that he has co-written a comic with X-Men and Lucifer writer Mike Carey.

Writing style

The GameWorld trilogy has innumerable allusions to literary works from all over the world, including fantasy fiction and other fiction, to tales of superheroes and occasionally even to movies. He draws inspiration heavily from Indian and Greek mythology, Indian folklore and modern fantasy fiction works. Basu liberally uses puns, tangential references, and situational humour.

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