South Korea’s second largest chipmaker SK Hynix Inc. on Thursday launched an in-house incubating program with six maiden projects backed by initial capital of $1 million..

SK Hynix held a launching ceremony for its HiGarage program at its headquarters in Icheon, Gyeonggi. The program – which was created based on the idea of how global information technology companies started in a garage – allows employees to develop project ideas and grants them opportunity to start their own business.

SK Hynix invited participation from employees in August, last year, and has since received 240 project ideas. Among them, the company selected six projects to be developed as in-house startups after considering project feasibility and level of social value creation. SK Hynix will invest 1.2 billion won ($ 1.07 million) in the projects.

Of the six project ideas include a project to localize chiller equipment, which is used to control temperature during test process. Korea depends much on imports for the equipment.

Another project involves development of semiconductor process data modeling technology that integrates artificial intelligence to establish algorithm to help boost development efficiency.

Employees that have been chosen to develop their project ideas will be relocated to a special division where they will be given up to 2 years to develop ideas and choose in the end between leaving jobs to begin their own businesses and remaining to further develop the project at SK Hynix.

The special division for startup incubators will allow employees to work flexible hours and apply absolute evaluation of their assessments to create an environment where they can focus on project development.

Employees that fail to take on their ideas further will be allowed to go back to work. Those that choose to develop the project at SK Hynix will be offered part of the profit from the project.

By Kim Gyu-sik and Lee Eun-joo

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