Bengaluru, Jan. 23 -- Food-delivery companies' move to phase out the 10-minute delivery proposition to ease safety and regulatory pressures is likely to push up customer acquisition costs and slow new customer additions-key metrics for building scale-in the short term, according to experts.

Although existing users are expected to remain engaged, the absence of a clear speed promise could make it harder to attract first-time users, for whom such messaging has historically served as a strong hook, said Satish Meena, the founder of market research firm Datum Intelligence.

"In the near term, new customer additions could slow because food delivery as a category is anyway seeing slower growth in transacting users, and what we're largely seein...