SHANGHAI, China--Morph Labs has secured $1.5 million in investments from two foreign venture capital firms.

In a statement, Hong Kong-based AO Capital said it has closed the pre-initial public offering (IPO) investment in Morph with Japanese investment firm CSK Venture Capital.

Morph, founded by Filipino tech entrepreneur Winston Damarillo, earlier announced plans of making an IPO locally within the second quarter this year.

Proceeds from the IPO will enable Morph to expand its operations, the company said in a separate statement.

Morph recently launched Morph AppSpace, a platform geared towards software-as-a-service (SaaS) for deployment and management of end-user Web-based applications.

The company, which has offices in Manila and Cebu, is looking to capitalize on healthy forecasts for the SaaS market.

Analyst firm Springboard Research predicts that the Asia Pacific enterprise applications market alone amounted to $154 million in 2006 and would account for 15 percent of the total market.